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I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 












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JOURNAL OF 
A FARMER'S DAUGHTER 



7 



ELAINE 'GOODALE 



ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF "APPLE BLOSSOMS, ETC. 



IViAY 13 ir 



NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET. 
I881 



/S8 1 



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Copyright by 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

1881 



JOURNAL OF 
A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 



APRIL.- 

AFTER all, say what they may about the 
farmer's life and labor, it is a pleasant, 
aye, and a profitable thing to be a farmer's 
daughter! Of course, I do not mean by a 
farmer's daughter that sturdy, red-cheeked 
maid-of-ali-work, who kneads bread and picks 
up potatoes with the same admirable vigor and 
elasticity ; her place in the household is more 
nearly supplied by our own black-eyed Mary, 

** Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, 
Loose of kerchief, and loose of hair," 

as Whittier makes her. 

But the higher opportunities offered to one 
who stands a little aside alike from the en- 



/ 



;,^JH'*i'»«ii--» fW^^ 



2 JOURNAL OF 

grossing toil and every-day interests of the 
farm, with a realizing sense of its value as art, 
as life, are not to be lightly regarded. 

Yesterday I happened upon papa's note 
and account books, glanced at the memoran- 
dum of farm expenses and the journal of farm 
work, and it came over me as a happy thought 
to keep, myself, an eight-months' journal of 
life on a farm, from the stand-point of the 
farmer's daughter ; a daily and weekly record 
of its picturesque phases, a swift analysis of 
its subtle and varying tendencies, a full and 
direct recognition of the grand creative power 
which makes its motive and its end. 



Sitting quietly by the window late this 
morning, after a ten minutes' run in the raw, 
chilly air, with clouds and sunshine chasing 
each other overhead, I took in at a glance the 
broad sweep of wood and meadow and the rich 
background of departing hills, in the desperate 
attempt to forget for an hour the dull, cold 



A FARMER* S DA UGHTER, 3 

purple of the naked forest, the dead, pale 
brown of the grass and fallen leaves, the 
roughened road, with a film of ice over ruts 
and hollows, — all the hard, unlovely features of 
the rude March-like day. 

It is one of the odd freaks of our New Eng- 
land spring, this sudden stiffening and numb- 
ing of April into a mere chrysalis, from which, 
a day later, a few degrees more of warmth will 
unfold a pair of butterfly wings. But the ele- 
mental power and splendor of this outlook 
from my window are the same at all seasons, 
and the moods of the mountains, lofty and 
terrible, are not those of the plains or the 
narrow ranges of lesser hills. It is this very 
isolation and separateness, indeed, in the near 
surroundings of our home, which make it a 
thing apart from the rural prettiness of the 
neighboring village, and compel a like noble- 
ness and simplicity in man, lest his rude or 
careless touch mar the unity of nature. 

Looking at the landscape to-day, with an 
unprejudiced and beauty-loving eye, how pain- 



4 JOURNAL OF 

ful are the unsightly patches of clearing on the 
mountain side, the wide reaches of meadow- 
land cut up into irregular fields, the unscrupu- 
lous highway with its double line of rail fence 
disfiguring the foreground ! 

All this would be very hard to bear did we 
not remember that Nature is a patient and a 
bountiful mother, for with all the slights and 
injuries we put upon her we are still her chil- 
dren. The genial soil still yields itself to the 
plow, the warm rains swell the dropped seed 
and sharpen the springing blades, the panting 
oxen share man's heritage of labor and lift for- 
giving eyes to his own ; for it is written that 
through all the earth seed-time and harvest 
shall not cease. 

As nerve and sinew, finely strung, 
That knit the mighty frame of man, 

Each chord is tense, the trees among. 
Since months and years began. 

And swift as throbs the youthful heart. 
Each moment racked with blissful pain, 

In every limb the sap doth start 
Thro* every tingling vein. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 5 

The prophecy of yesterday*s wind and cold 
is already fulfilled ; the sweet miracle of April 
wrought in a night ; and to-day a warm south 
wind is blowing, the middle distance is ob- 
scured by an opaline haze, and away down in 
the ^' brook hollow," at the foot of the long 
sloping meadows, rises a little thread of blue 
smoke, vanishing into thin air before it reaches 
the tops of those tall maples. Following that 
wavering ring of vapor, and treading heavily 
on the spongy meadow-ground, while the liquid 
notes of the blue-bird drop down at our feet ; 
then crossing the noisy little brook by a narrow 
and uneven line of stepping-stones, we stumble 
suddenly upon a camp-fire in the woods, with 
a huge round kettle swung over it gypsy- 
fashion, and hear from all the trees about the 
steady drip-drip of the sap. 

This fascinating pursuit of sugar-making, 
*^half work and half play," as John Burroughs 
calls it, is also equally attractive to outsiders, 
and one may sit by the hour on this warm 
springy board, with feet to the fire and back 



6 JOURNAL OF -^ 

against a log, watching the shadowy figures 
hovering on the outskirts of the drifting smoke 
and lapping flames, or dipping one's cup into 
the seething liquid, reinforced now and again 
by pailfuls of fresh sap, and therefore seldom 
very sweet, after all. Better still do we find 
it to wander ofT into the outlying woods ; to 
taste the ebbing life-blood of the maple with 
lips against the wound, and thrill with its subtle 
suggestions ; to shake the golden dust from 
drooping tassels of the alder, and part their 
dingy mat of leaves in search of the swelling, 
pink-tipped buds of the arbutus ; to drink the 
crystal-cold brook water out of the hollow of 
the hand, and push bare chilled fingers into a 
network of clinging roots in the damp, fresh- 
smelling earth. The maple camp seems a 
sufficient centre to this wild, free life, quite as 
real and necessary, indeed, as the fire on our 
own hearth-stone, indicated now in its turn by 
the faint blue smoke from the chimney ; and 
although there is a general scattering of our 
group as the mid-day meal is announced, those 



A * FA RMER'S DA UGHTER, 7 

enthusiasts who remain to roast eggs and 
apples in the ashes may not improbably have 
the best of it. Here they dream away the 
hours of the long and silent afternoon, musing 
from time to time over the open pages of a 
favorite book, which draws an added charm 
from its surroundings ; and perhaps when the 
shadows of evening begin to fall, and the trees 
to loom up like ghosts in the lurid light of the 
fire, the truants of morning return for a fare- 
well look, and all walk slowly back again in the 
dim twilight, under the great white stars, shut- 
ting their doors at last with a lingering look 
and sigh on the silence and the mystery of 
night. 

Thro' April woods our way we take, 

Alive to every hurrying mood, 
Till mingled starts and languors make 

A fever in the blood. 

But he whose thirsty lips would drain 

The life it is not his to know, 
How should he prick the swelling vein 

And cause the sap to flow ! 



8 JOURNAL OF 

Jtpril !f tni^. 

Now that the brief interval of sugar-mak- 
ing is a thing of the past, leaving no trace 
in the wild woods save a rude stone fire- 
place on the charred and blackened earth, 
and a rapidly healing scar in the kingly fore- 
head of more than one forest monarch, the 
willing farmer throws aside this pretty and 
almost unpremeditated by-play, and becomes 
absorbed in the more ponderous preparations 
for the season's work. The heavier labor that 
occupies these first warm days has as little of 
the picturesque about it as anything in the 
operations of the farm ; nevertheless, it con- 
tains an element of vital interest, being a part 
of the needful patience and thoroughness 
which lay the sure foundation of the farmer's 
toil. 

The exquisite cleanliness of the woods and 
fields is something so rapid and unseen as to 
be distinctly unattainable in the garden or the 
barnyard ; yet even here the clumsy attempts 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 9 

of man are only made possible through the 
continual delicate processes of nature. Loads 
upon loads of manure have all day been zig- 
zagging heavily through the barn meadows, till 
now the prospective potato field is dotted with 
dark conical heaps. Leaving my custard mid- 
way, I went out early in the afternoon to 
search the mows for hens' eggs, and regarded 
with pleasure the neatness and thoroughness 
of the work from its other side ; for while two 
men had cleared out the litter of the barnyard, 
another handy fellow, a born mechanic, had 
been straightening loose boards, tinkering at 
latches, and putting things in order generally. 
In the same way, only far more quickly and 
silently, the debris of the woods is removed ; 
the heaps of fallen leaves and the dead bodies 
of birds and animals are absorbed into the soil 
and help to enrich it, aiding in the inevitable 
metamorphosis of matter from one form of life 
into another. 

Somewhat later in the day I flew to the gar- 
den, where a miniature bonfire was blazing, the 



lO JOURNAL OF 

dense smoke veering rapidly from one side to 
another, and witnessed the purification by fire, 
the extremest test of all. Dry leaves, raked 
lightly off the brown grass quickening to 
green, vines and brush and dead twigs broken 
from the apple-trees, in a few moments noth- 
ing was left of them all but a little heap of 
white ashes, while beyond the orchard wall a 
surging flame still raged along the straggling 
hedge of raspberry bushes. 

Toward nightfall, again, a little plowing was 
done, and immediately a light rain pattered on 
the naked sod and filled the air with sweet, 
aromatic odors ; the lingering smell of smoke 
mixed with the fresh, earthy scent of the up- 
turned furrow, and the vague, delicious breath 
of opening arbutus in the woods. 

After the rough spring cleaning is over, 
and before the ground is dry enough for ordi- 
nary field-work, the first care of the farmer — 
if he take any pride in it at all — is always for 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 1 1 

his garden. Ready and watchful is his care for 
this guarded precinct, which provides his table 
with things of more immediate import than 
the field crops of buckwheat and potatoes, and 
maintains an equal intimacy with the farm lad 
in flannel shirt and overalls, who follows the 
plow on April mornings, and the little kitchen 
maid who stands three months later amid the 
rustling corn, stripping their green linings from 
the score of milky ears in her blue-checked 
apron. 

Yet, after all, who that recognizes the near 
relations of land and home will smile at these 
trim rows, so clean and free from weeds, or 
grumble at the sensitive pride, akin to that of 
the careful housekeeper, with which a true far- 
mer orders his garden. 

These grave consultations with child and 
wife, these close adaptations to the imperious 
wants of growing things, this detailed arrange- 
ment and minute execution have a place and 
a power of their own in the emphasis that 
they give to the demands and the rewards of 
home. 



12 JOURNAL OF 



Jpril Itft^^R^ 



O pregnant mystery of life, 
A strife divine, an endless strife ! 
O germ but faintly understood. 
Whose growth is hid in motherhood. 

With instinct blind, the fruitful earth 
Gives grass and grain a common birth, 
And, swayed by law of kind to kind. 
Earth's creature yields, as deaf and blind. 

It would seem that spring is the only time 
to be born — the time of the beginnings of 
things, when the woods and fields bring forth 
their myriads, when unnumbered winged and 
creeping things increase and multiply, when 

" The mother of months in meadow and plain 
Fills the shadows and windy places 
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain." 

And not only the untamed dwellers in the 
forest, but the more domestic and comfortable 
creatures of the barnyard, who have gained 
from continual human contact a certain hu- 
manizing influence which may or may not 
compensate for the loss of their savage free- 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 13 

dom, find the time big with promise of speedy- 
fulfilment. 

Certain it is that whatever may be the value 
to them of such mutual aid and companionship 
as exist between us, to us there is something 
of preciousness in the relation, and a pleasant 
excitement pervades the household when the 
good news is told. No wonder, then, that pa- 
pa's announcement of a little heifer calf — made 
before we were up in the morning — created 
quite a sensation in this uneventful life of ours. 
The moment breakfast was over we all went 
eagerly out to welcome the new arrival, to ex- 
claim over its baby beauty and vigor, the ex- 
quisite varying color of its tender skin, and the 
appealing look in its large and liquid eyes. One 
thing only damped the loving enthusiasm, and 
made the supposed benefactor feel himself an 
inhuman despot, guilty of unnatural cruelty — a 
deep, pathetic moo from the unhappy mother 
robbed of her rightful offspring, which hushed 
at once the general jubilee, and struck a momen- 
tary awe into the faces of the listeners. Such 



14 JOURNAL OF 

are the inevitable conditions of a second and 
hardly less complicated form of slavery. 

O mystery of life's intent ! 
Strange shock of woe, untimely sent ! 
O wild, sweet hope at one with pain — 
Panting and dumb, she yields again ! 

The joy was hers, whate'er betide ; 
The place is empty at her side ; 
By that sharp pang, all joy above, 
She drains the mystic draught of love. 

Among the pleasantest of rural sounds is 
the cheerful cackle of hens in the early morn- 
ing, and the calling together of her feathered 
flock at breakfast time by one or another of 
the child-owners is surely a pretty sight. Es- 
pecially is this true of a colony where each in- 
dividual Biddy is recognized and petted by 
her mistress, and even the week-old broods of 
younglings are known by sight and by name. 

Yesterday a hen was set, — the clean straw 
rounded out by loving hands to a wide, deep 
hollow for the soft protecting breast, the fresh 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. IS 

eggs, counted and marked, laid evenly down, 
and the anxious, clucking little mother 
smoothed and fed. How dainty and domestic 
she looked to our partial eyes, her soft brown 
feathers composed to a praiseworthy neatness 
and regularity of outline, with hay-seed sifting 
lightly over her from a niche in the wall, and 
golden-tawny lights and shadows lying all 
about her in the warm stillness ! A systematic 
round of daily visits for three long weeks of 
patient waiting, will insure to her the daily 
food and exercise she needs ; slowly the hid- 
den germs will quicken into life close under- 
neath that brooding warmth of wings, till a 
heart beats in each tiny cell, and a baby chick 
is knocking at the door, and then, — but let us 
drop such flights of fancy, and count instead 
those other chickens hatched to-day. 

Anxious and flurried and somewhat distrust- 
ful is the proud and happy mother, now lifted 
from her nest, clucking hurriedly and worried- 
ly through all the disturbance, and following 
every motion of theirs, or ours, with watchful 



1 6 JOURNAL OF 

eager eyes of brightest brown. And those 
twelve little fluttering, chirping things, like 
balls of animated down, — the cunning black 
ones, and the oddly or prettily marked brown 
ones, and the fluffy yellow ones, — how warm 
and dainty and cosy they are ! 

With evident unwillingness on the part of 
our youngest, they are once more consigned to 
the hen's protecting care, and with what tender 
vehemence she coaxes them to eat, never stop- 
ping to satisfy her own importunate hunger, 
but encouraging them to huddle together as 
soon as may be under the downy covert of 
her wings, whence subdued stirrings and peep- 
ings before long announce that we had better 
for the present take our leave. 

Jtprtl ¥m(intQ-8r$l 

But it is not so easy to stand guard over 
the turkey's nest of freckled eggs, and pretty, 
pale-green brood ; for the wild, shy creature 
accepts no foster-mother's care, and makes the 
warm, scented woodlands her favorite hiding- 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, IJ 

place. Only by following her at a distance 
when she goes out to lay, is it possible to dis- 
cover her secret, and the daily quest had long 
been unsuccessful, when I entered on that long 
and fortunate pursuit which I shall now relate. 
The beginning of the chase would certainly 
have been puzzling to the uninitiated observer. 
Slowly, stealthily, turning aside now and then, 
and pecking at the dry grass with assumed 
carelessness, the would-be mother kept on her 
solitary way, and strolling about with equally 
studied negligence, I kept her just in sight. It 
soon became evident, from her somewhat more 
hurried step, her frequent diving into clumps 
of laurel and rustling among fallen leaves, and 
an indescribable anxiety in her air, that she 
was looking for a nest as yet only existing 
in imagination. This knowledge doubled the 
difficulties of the task, but it doubled the 
pleasures as well; and from a wondering in- 
terest in the unknown motives which guided 
that seemingly irrational choice, I came to feel 
that I was rudely invading her dearest privacy. 



1 8 JOURNAL OF 

If Ihad any right there, at all events she did 
not recognize it, for I well knew that the 
slightest intimation of my presence would ex- 
cite her suspicions and put an end to my 
search. 

Her light, quick step was distinctly audible, 
and I followed her with ear and eye, looking 
sharply, listening breathlessly, and keenly 
alive to the nameless charm of the pursuit ; 
till, after a half hour or so of indecision, my 
quarry entered an evergreen thicket, beside 
three tall chestnuts, and — did not return. 

Sinking readily down at the foot of a neigh- 
boring tree, whence I could look on a vista of 
distant hills, I abandoned myself to the deli- 
ciousness of day-dreams for a long interval 
of waiting, to the repeated accompaniment of 
Emerson's lines of magic : 

**Soft on the south wind sleeps the haze ; 
So on thy broad, mystic van 
' Lie the opal-colored days. 

And when the timid creature had departed, 
with a sort of shy exultation in her manner, it 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 19 

was from something of a kindred mood that I 
parted the thick glossy leaves, and saw the yet 
warm treasure, large, white, pointed at one 
end, sprinkled with the very color of the dead- 
brown leaves on which it lay, and touching me 
with a half-resolve never to betray that dainty 
episode which I had seen. 

There's a flash of wings in the sunny heaven, 

And the cool, bright air of morn, 
In the sweep of a glossy plume, is riven 

With the bolt of a noble scorn. 
Our shouts of welcome ring blithe and clear, 

And the echoing woods reply 
With a mocking glee to the spring of the year, 

As the prince of the air skims by. 

The robin hops round the open door, 

For the tid-bit he likes best ; 
And the sparrow over the vine-bound porch 

Is lining her dainty nest ; 
With a startled cry from her covert gone 

The phoebe sobs and grieves ; 
And the thrush is silenced and made forlorn 

By a rain on the budding leaves. 

But the swallow comes in the sweet mid-spring, 
And gladdens our waiting sight 



20 JOURNAL OF 

With the delicate, stately curve of his wing, 
And his haughty, beautiful flight. 

He stoops, like a king, to the old barn-door, 
In the old, familiar way. 

And his nest clings fast, as it clung before. 
To the rafters bare and gray. 



There's a twitter of love 'neath the dusky eaves, 

Where the twilight lingers late. 
And crooning a ditty, as lovers use. 

He is wooing his tender mate ; 
There's a whisper and stir where the stillness broods ; 

There's a shadowy warmth most dear ; 
And we turn with a look from the April woods, 

For the swallows at last are here ! 



I HAVE followed the plow for half a day, not 
with any material agency, but by the unaided 
force of imagination ; and the straight, dark 
furrows running the entire length and breadth 
of that ten-acre field are to me the lines of a 
great unfinished poem in an untranslatable 
tongue : 

" For Nature beats in perfect tune. 
And rounds with rhyme her every rune." 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 21 

Half sitting, half lying on a broad, flat stone 
against a gnarled and lichened tree-trunk, I 
refreshed my eyes with the cool, shady tints of 
the newly-turned sod, or followed untiringly 
backward and forward the heavy movements 
of a yoke of oxen, and the proud, quick step 
of the more elegantly and slightly formed 
horses, not to speak of the comparatively 
superb and flexible attitudes of the men be- 
hind them — physically most perfect of all. 

I had taken up my position on a swell of 
rising ground at the margin of the woods ; the 
plowing was two fields off, and in the back- 
ground a near mountain slope lay dark and 
bare against the horizon, while at its base red 
maples flamed out in exquisite and indefina- 
ble grace of outline. In the whole picture 
was something rich and splendid — a primal 
beauty and significance which was not at all dis- 
turbed by the needful human element. And, 
more than all, the slow, steady rhythm of hard 
labor — labor material but not coarse — moved 
or appeared to move in nature's absolute 
round of passive beauty and effortless power. 



22 JOURNAL OF 

Who has not felt that strange something, at 
once refreshing and tantaHzing, in the soft 
waywardness of an April rain ? 

It is in the press of a busy and an anxious 
season ; the farmer and his men crowd needful 
work into the shortest possible space ; yet with 
what provoking unconcern the light showers 
flit daily over the sky, keeping men and 
horses under shelter by those gentle ministra- 
tions without which all their toil were vain ! 

Now that the heavens have proclaimed a 
truce to the plow, he whose hand is wont to 
guide it must wait, with whatever half-con- 
cealed impatience, for Nature to delay and set 
aside his finite plans and purposes in the work- 
ings of her own infinite wisdom. And we 
who look on at the mingling of pretty epi- 
sodes with her slow unfolding, may lend an 
idle hour to these wonderful last touches, cre- 
ated out of nothing by the "^ fingers of the 
rain." 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 23 

There are no broad ripples of divinest light 
and shadow to attract the eye toward distant 
grain fields, — only bare rough ground, and 
meadows clothed upon with green, where 
milky houstonias are spilled broadcast, and 
mixed along the uneven roadsides with the 
warm and perfumed blue of early violets. 

Yet beside hidden water-courses in the 
valley below, the willow is clouded with tender 
color, and the muffled sound of the brook 
mixes with the patter of eddying drops, 
while shifting strains of woodland music float 
through the air. 

Such are the rapid and sure indications by 
which this April shower fulfils its mission ; 
willing, indeed, that he who has learned, in 
part, to adapt himself to all Nature, should 
thus be swayed by her lightest mood and wait 
upon her pleasure. 



MAY. 
Hag 'Itrsl 

•* Where sliall we keep the holiday. 
And duly greet the entering May ? 
Too stiait and low our cottage doors. 
And all unmeet our carpet floors ; 
Nor spacious court, nor monarch's hall, 
Suffice to hold the festival. ** 

Emerson's *' May-Day/' 

AND the answer of the poet is the answer 
consciously or unconsciously given alike 
by poet and plowman : the command to a wise 
and temperate gladness in the open air. The 
Earth holds continual festival, the stir of her 
wings and her sweet ecstacies of song are part 
of the everlasting necessities ; for she is neither 
drudge nor merry-maker, her weeping and her 
laughter are one with the painless throbbing of 
her heart. 

24 



A FARMER* S DAUGHTER, 25 

But for these men who have lain in her 
bosom, whose arms she strengthened with 
sinews of iron, Avhose arteries are hot with her 
blood, what is their reward for the work of a 
lifetime in wind and sun? Will she not 
sweeten their toil and surround their bed ? Or 
is it the dregs of that brimming cup, humanity, 
which weakens the crimson tide and inflames 
it with evil passions? And those who have 
grown still further away from the all-mother, 
whose hand is palsied, whose cheek is sallow 
and cold, whose vices eat into flesh and bone 
and fester in unwholesome darkness, her child- 
hearted joy is not for them who will not ac- 
cept her first conditions. For they who rejoice 
with her now rejoice with her always. 

Another and a no less striking and beautiful 
development of the mother-instinct than those 
already witnessed among our four-footed 
friends, was fully exhibited this morning by 
our petted favorite, Kate, who has just be- 



26 JOURNAL OF 

come the mother of a fine colt. Gentle, yet 
spirited, of a sensitive and high-strung temper- 
ament, united with great docility and intelli- 
gence, the unreasoning fierceness which min- 
gled with her love was all the more to be won- 
dered at. 

Placing herself before the new-born foal, she 
would charge from side to side of her narrow 
pen, showing her teeth in the most vicious 
manner, and lashing out behind at any sign of 
approach, however friendly and hesitating. 
The men were literally afraid to go near her, 
and her boldest admirers kept their distance. 
Huddled together in an interested and some- 
what excited group behind the heavy farm 
gate, we watched the pair with sympathetic 
eyes, our admiration for the long-legged, white- 
faced colt already subordinated to a tenderness 
and almost awe for the holy ofifice of maternity, 
which, even in its brute instincts, is proudly 
triumphant, as well as nobly enduring, and full 
of a terrible, grand beauty. 

Had we made our arrangements to separate 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 27 

them by force, I doubt if the plan would have 
succeeded, or if our proud, high-spirited mare 
would ever have forgotten the insult. Even in 
the slight struggle which accompanied a return 
to pasture, our sympathies were all with her, 
and we should hardly have been sorry to see 
harsh treatment or needless provocation of any 
sort, on the part of the man who held her, pun- 
ished as immediately and justly as she would, 
in all probability, have punished it. 

For more than a week now the cows have 
been roaming over their broad, rich pastures, 
and cropping the sweet, juicy herbage with 
unrestrained delight. And we, even while ad- 
miring their delicacy of form and softness of 
color, their slow, undulating motion, or grace- 
ful grouping of reposeful attitudes, are almost 
inclined to envy the exquisite sensation which 
must attend these sweet first days of freedom. 
After the cold ground, with its covering of 
trodden straw, the light, springy turf under 



28 JOURNAL OF 

their feet ; after the dingy barns, the green and 
forest-skirted field ; after dry, dusty locks of 
hay, the never-palling taste of tender young 
grass, and the delicious coolness of running 
water ! Where shall we find for our educated 
palates such keen and sweet delight ? 

What do the cows do with themselves all 
day, I wonder, from the time of the farm-boy's 
shouts and urging in the dewy morning till he 
follows them home at night ? Do they turn 
from breaking their fast to stray through the 
dusk twilight of the woods, crossing and re- 
crossing its tangled mazes by half-familiar 
paths? Do they stand knee-deep in the brown 
brook, and listen to the rustle of winds and 
the plash of water? Have they any dim sense 
of fellowship with the oven-bird under the 
overarching roots, and the slim, dark cat-bird 
in the alders ; with the woodchuck peeping 
from his burrow with bright brown eyes, and 
the mole sliding rapidly along the warm mud? 

As to freedom and friendliness of inter- 
course there is little to be said, but yesterday 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 29 

an accident happened in the pasture, the 
nature of which is still a mystery. Our lit- 
tle Daisy, the pet of the children and the 
pride of the men, was found lying on her 
side, while the other cows were gathered 
close about her, trampling her with their feet, 
pushing her with their horns, and evidently 
annoying her by their apparently idle curios- 
ity. When the pretty creature was brought 
slowly up, limping painfully and breathing 
hard, among the chorus of pitiful exclamations 
a wonder was expressed at this heartless con- 
duct on the part of her companions, and it was 
not pleasant to remember that a similar prac- 
tice, somewhat disguised, is still current among 
civilized human beings. 

I HAVE long been assured that the pig is a 
much-abused animal, and having just been out 
to view a recent purchase with appreciative 
eyes, shall very properly seize the opportunity 
to do him tardy justice. His appearance is 
nothing remarkable, it is true, yet a sleek, 



30 JOURNAL OF 

comely pig, with a short, curly tail and mildly 
inquisitive nose, is, to my taste, far from un- 
pleasing; and what could be prettier than a 
litter of young pigs, round and pink and dainty 
as such babies always are, with a bewitching 
mixture of infantile charms and infantile help- 
lessness ! 

The pig is one of the most valuable of do- 
mestic animals, and the good qualities which 
entitle him to this distinction constitute like- 
wise his chief claim to the respect and liking 
so rarely vouchsafed him by the farmer's 
daughter. ^* Thou shalt not wash dishes nor 
yet feed the swine,'* are among the lover's 
inducements to a maiden seemingly of this 
description ; and still there is surely little hard- 
ship in the offering of an occasional basket of 
pea-pods or head of lettuce, or even a daily 
bucket of milk-and-meal to this grateful and 
affectionate little creature. The refuse of the 
garden and the table never comes amiss to 
him, and his grunts and squeals of joyful ap- 
preciation are payment for all our trouble. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 31 

Exception is sometimes taken to the man- 
ners of our protJge, but for my part I find him, 
when favorably situated, invariably cleanly in 
his habits, and polite in his behavior. In proof 
of his ambition and undeveloped intelligence, 
it is only necessary to point to the many well- 
known examples of *Mearnedpigs;*' and in fact 
I have reason to believe, from the results of a 
friend's experience, that the ^' mute, inglorious'* 
inmate of a neighbor's unpretending pigsty 
may be readily trained to the display of sur- 
prising knowledge and cleverness. 

The tender blades of grass are springing 
thick in the meadow, and the hardy dande- 
lions are spangling it with gold, while yet the 
neighboring field is rough and bare, and the 
farmer is dropping potatoes or scattering 
grain. For the wild growths follow each 
other in such rapid, unbroken succession from 
spring to fall that a cultivated crop, advancing 
by slow stages, is a noticeable feature in the 



32 JOURNAL OF 

landscape. There is no well-defined limit, 
either to the preparing of the soil or the 
planting of tubers, but for a period of six 
weeks or more the two are all-important. 
And while to the looker-on there is no sense 
of monotony, there is nevertheless room for 
little variation on the old themes of patient, 
unremitting toil, with man and beast un- 
equally yoked together. 

Here, again, we make question of sympathy 
and understanding between the two ; and while 
there are, of course, illustrations from one ex- 
treme to the other, it must be said that among 
ordinary farm laborers there is less of feeling 
and observance than one would suppose. Go- 
ing out together at morning and evening twi- 
lights, working for the same ends under the 
same master, their close relations as fellow- 
beings and co-laborers are half forgotten 
through the instinct of command on the one 
side and the habit of trained obedience on 
the other. 

No wonder, then, that while freely initiated 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, ZZ 

into all the processes of planting, the prettiest 
thing I have seen to-day is the open-mouthed 
delight of a ragged urchin who sat proudly 
astride of the biggest horse and rode before 
the plow. 

After all, I believe I might better have 
given up my turkey to the doubtful tender- 
ness of her possibly unnatural protectors than 
to have abandoned her to the ravenous cruelty 
of her natural enemies ! Such, at least, was 
the thought that came over me with a shud- 
der that was half of pity and half of fear, when 
going out to visit the quiet sitter in the bor- 
ders of the forest, I came suddenly upon an 
empty nest, and a scattering heap of dusky 
feathers to tell the tale. 

Who that overlooked, in the freshness and 
ardor of youthful nature-worship, the dangers 
of dampness, the obvious discomfort of wind 
and wet, could possibly have foreseen a forest 
tragedy, in which the handsome cat-eyed lynx, 



34 JOURNAL OF 

seen leaping from rock to rock among the 
scrub oaks, was to play an active part I And 
who would connect that gentle, timid mother 
with a midnight scene of slaughter and rapine, 
a short, unequal struggle for life and death ! 

Yet so it is, and life is inexorable to them 
as well as to us, — inexorable, indeed, to all 
God's creatures of every degree, both preying 
and preyed upon. Let us guard their lives 
with jealous care in so far as they touch 
upon our own, but let us not forget that the 
balance of power is in other hands than ours. 

Ha? J^^^m% 

I lie along the orchard rows, 

Beneath a 'broidered canopy ; 

The dusk-winged thrush flits silent by, 

And soft against a pure blue sky 
The blossomed branches meet and close. 



By rude or wanton winds laid bare 
The headlong petals fall apart ; 
And shut pink buds begin to start 
When, rifling each a virgin heart, 

The bees their stolen favors wear. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 35 

O rapturous eagerness of May ! 

O most intoxicating bliss ! 
*How should we know or stop for this ; 

What joys in after-life we miss, 
In youth we spend or throw away ! 

One might well be pardoned for thinking 
that it were impossible to say anything new 
about the blossoming of uncounted orchards; 
yet is not our enjoyment of them tender and 
full as ever, and stirred with all the intimate 
perfume of five, or ten, or fifty years ago? 

Foremost and fairest of all come the en- 
chanting apple-blossoms, with their fluctuant 
curves, their alternating flush and pallor ; 
then the white storm of laden cherry-trees, 
the pure, cold simplicity of the stately pear, 
and the hotly-crimsoned cheek of the rash and 
impetuous peach ! 

Gazing up into the exquisitely pure and 
tender sky, "behind an overhanging cloud of 
blossoms, heavy with sweet odors, who would 
not divine the hush and mystery of summer 
days, " that scarce dare breathe, they are so 
beautiful ! " And while we are wrapt in this 



36 JOURNAL OF 

delicious, dreamy repose, we question idly of 
unimagined splendors, and give ourselves up 
to the luxury of wondering whether long 
vistas of never-ceasing bloom, or orchards 
mixed along the open way with grassy fields 
and green stretches of woodland, make the 
perfect paradise. 

But even in waking dreams how could one 
who loves fruit blossoms choose other than 
the truth, or doubt and deny the soft halo of 
promise wherein rests their chiefest charm ? 
For present pleasures are many compared 
with future gains ; the one is nothing without 
the knowledge of the other, and the other 
without the perfume of the one is vain. Such 
are some of the graver musings of a day in 
apple-blossom time. 

Why is it that a picnic is always considered, 
with us, at least, as the crowning festivity of the 
farmer*s holiday ? Is it not, above all, as a fit 
and pleasant reminder that his work is to feed 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 37 

the world, and as steward of God*s bounty, 
freely to dispense His blessings? And has not 
our chosen spot on the tender and elastic turf, 
at the foot of a plowed field, or beneath the 
light-springing foliage of a stately elm, as 
grand a beauty and as rich a significance as a 
perch on some, rocky eyrie miles away ? 

Such, at least, is the faith in which we inau- 
gurated to-day the picnic season, taking, as 
usual, a basket of plain but generous fare, and 
walking or riding to the grove of magnificent 
trees at the head of a wild ravine, whence bub- 
bles up a spring of the purest water. 

Placing a flask of coffee in the cold stream, 
we made some lemonade, and spread a crimson 
cloth beneath an oak, scattering plates and 
spoons broadcast, and setting out our jellied 
chicken, our hard-boiled eggs, buttered biscuit, 
sponge cake, and preserved strawberries. But 
before sitting down to this home-made repast, 
which borrowed from its surroundings a certain 
wild flavor of unaccustomedness, we broke up 
into twos and threes for rambles in the woods 



33 yOURiVAL OF 

and races down the hill, flower hunts in the 
meadow, and most harmless of bird's-nesting 
by the brook. And then, after picnicing gaily 
on the grass, in the full enjoyment of sharp ap- 
petites and simple tastes, we read and talked 
pleasantly for an hour or two, — a programme 
often varied with recitations, or out-door 
games, or other impromptu arrangements more 
or less unique and startling. 

Of course, the record of one such day is 
trifling enough, but the plan of such a summer 
series of home picnics, and the home life which 
makes such a plan possible, have surely a very 
real interest and an almost universal applica- 
tion. 

The subject of country road-making is one 
demanding timely notice and special mention, 
so it is but natural that after bumping over the 
sods and scraping over the gravel for a fort- 
night or more, I confide to my journal a few 
of its disagreeables and manifold uncertainties. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 39 

When the ringing shouts of boys and men 
resound on the wintry morning air, and with 
oxen and snow-plow and shovels the untrodden 
paths are beaten down, we do not complain 
of the slowness or slovenliness of the Avork ; 
but now that the alternate freezing and thaw- 
ing are over and the ground fairly '* settled," 
we do not like to see the smooth, green road- 
sides defaced by tearing up the turf, disturbing 
the fresh mould, and leaving painful disfigure- 
ment in place of fresh-springing loveliness. 
Still more intolerant are we of the narrow 
and uneven highways, sloping abruptly to 
either side, and jolting violently at every step ; 
for, to most of us, the comfort of our drives 
depends quite as much upon ease of motion as 
agreeableness of surroundings ! Dust and 
mud are comparatively unknown on our moun- 
tain roads ; snow, if sometimes uncomfortably 
deep and drifted, has at least a dazzling white- 
ness ; but for several weeks at this season the 
" mending '' of the roads seems rather a 
wholesale destruction of both comfort and 
beauty. 



40 JOURNAL OF 

Notwithstanding these and similiar ob- 
stacles, there is much more to be said on the sub- 
ject of drives, — such drives as people take who 
live nine miles from a lemon, and as we are now 
taking almost every day. After studying, bit 
by bit, the commonplace details of farm life, it 
gives one a fresh sense of their larger applica- 
tion, to seize, in passing, the obvious result of 
other men's study. And for him who takes 
notes and draws inferences, there is more than 
appears in a test of this kind ; for he is fortunate 
indeed to whom the experience of others is 
only less valuable than his own. With a man 
of this stamp for a companion, I can readily 
lend myself to his views, and resolve the broad, 
rich country-side to its inherent elements of 
power and fertility. Here is tilled ground, 
here excellent timber ; there mulleined pastures 
and ledges of rock. And while discriminating 
thus, I feel that the man who figured in an 
ancient tale with a somew^hat obtrusive moral 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 41 

as seeing only timber in a magnificent forest 
is fully justified by the workings of his own 
mind, for it is in material gifts and obvious 
uses that the foundations of the world are 
laid. 

Again, when listening to another, the artistic 
temperament reasserts itself. The uplands 
swell with gushing grass or springing grain, 
and from the floating, curling clusters of the 
wild grape, like foam-crests on the forest edges, 
an exquisite aroma fills the air. About the 
dwellings of the scattered farmer-folk I see no 
longer the unmistakable signs of thrift and 
unthrift, but only a rude attractiveness, a neg- 
ligent grace. I look at fences and barns and 
irregular plowed fields with a sense of jarred 
surprise, and turn with pleasure to the wild, 
uncultivable hill-country. 

Yet it is a good thing to widen one's horizon 
a little ; there is rest and refreshment in either 
of two such contradictory but not irreconcil- 
able moods ; it is even possible to forget all 
mere suggestion and comparison, and to feel 
only that Divine urgency which presses under- 



42 JOURNAL OF 

neath the hasty exactions of the moment, and 
lifts them as a tree-germ lifts an accidental 
weight. 

It is long since the soft continuous dropping 
of an April rain, and no shower has cooled the 
heated palms of Spring, till leaf and flower are 
beginning to droop in her feverish grasp. The 
valleys have been gasping for a fortnight with 
dust and drought, and even on the cool, 
shadowy mountain-side the springs are drying 
up in the parched ground, the snakes come out 
to bask on the burning rocks, and the woods 
are stricken suddenly with the seemingly hec- 
tic flush of pink azaleas. 

But louder than the plaint of the phcebe, 
whose brook has shrunken below the bridge to 
green sHme and pools of stagnant water, more 
importunate than the mute imploring of the 
white starflower, hourly perishing of thirst, is 
the muttered discontent of an anxious house- 
hold, to whom the selfish cares of each are of 
paramount importance. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 43 

The farmer looks from the sky to his pota- 
toes, and back to the relentlessly blue sky 
again ; his wife mourns over the flower-seeds 
which refuse to germinate, and the plants not 
yet transplanted ; while the children push back 
the damp curls from their heated foreheads 
and wish it would rain and water the straw- 
berry-bed. 

But even while I write great banks of cloud 
with ragged edges are tumbling out of the 
west, and the north is faintly illumined by pale 
flashes of distant lightning. 

We leave our books and work or hurry 
through our tea to gather in eager groups on 
porch and piazza, discussing weather probabil- 
ities with absorbed faces ; while inky clouds 
rolling up white on the under side and lurid 
clouds with brassy edges close and scatter in 
every direction, advancing and retreating with 
the ominous roll of thunder. Finally, after all 
hopes are baffled and subdued by these strange 
tactics, a transparent fold of purest gray sweeps 
over the blue hills, and veils with sheeted rain 
the broad dark mountain-side. 



44 JOURNAL OF 

There is a sudden scattering in the woods 
and among the dry leaves ; and a stir not un- 
Hke it in our quiet door-yard, where Mary flies 
out on some sudden errand with wind-blown 
dress and hair, and the little ones flutter about 
like distracted chickens. 

To the watchers on the piazza there comes a 
zig-zag streak of lightning, burning and blind- 
ing, almost simultaneously with a rush of big 
drops, and grinding, tearing thunder. The re- 
mainder of the storm must be watched from 
the safe screen of window or door ; and a glori- 
ous storm it is, with a strange sense of effort 
in it, too, and a world of contradictory splen- 
dors, even to the pale-green sunset light and 
the soft unearthly glow beyond the clear hori- 
zon line. After this wild, beautiful outburst 
is over, there comes a strange sense of relief, 
— strange as the supernatural stillness and the 
almost metallic green of grass and leaves, and 
to-morrow the hot humid morning will stimu- 
late anew the rapid growth in field and garden, 
in leafy wood and teeming meadow. 



JUNE, 

THERE is no doubt that human nature is 
human nature the world over, and to a 
sympathetic observer there is a great deal to 
interest and absorb, even among the '* farm 
hands/' 

A ** practical'* man may see in them only the 
imperfect instruments of his will; a dreamer 
may look at the varying possibilities of pictu- 
resque treatment ; but one who lays hold on 
the true realities of life soon learns to enter in 
a measure into theirs. For the lives of these 
men, it must be remembered, do not differ so 
essentially from our own ; to them the complex 
problems with which we have to deal are pre- 
sented over again in a ruder and more primitive 

45 



46 JOURNAL OF 

form. Of course it is impossible, in the infor- 
mality of a journal, to do more than hint at 
the bold strokes and imminent dangers which 
follow in the train of circumstance ; yet a 
stranger who is also a friend may become ac- 
quainted in a day with sufficient raw material 
for more than a day's record. 

Men carry the clue to their lives in their 
faces, to begin with, and the simpler the life- 
lesson the sooner we read it here. Occasionally 
a countenance is seen whose every feature is 
simply grotesque. The small, twinkling, crafty 
eyes, the long, hooked nose, the mouth with 
its disgusting leer; here is only a hideous cari- 
cature of a man. And the impression is at 
once confirmed by the slouching gait, the man- 
ner, at once obsequious and self-asserting, indi- 
cating a broad farce of mental capacity and an 
utterly distorted and degraded moral nature. 
A type equally mischievous, if less revolting, is 
that of the sharp-eyed, keen-witted, thoroughly 
bad and reckless man, with the look and dispo- 
sition of a very fiend, thieving hands, and a 
lying tongue. 



A FARMER* S DA UGHTER, 47 

But how. much oftener we meet with some 
quiet, hard-working fellow, honestly ashamed 
of his bad ** bringing up '* and consequent bad 
behavior; or manly, straightforward boy, am- 
bitious of knowledge and power, whose roving 
disposition and ungovernable temper are con- 
tinually leading him astray. Then there is the 
crippled lad, chief among whose simple, girl- 
ish tastes is a passionate love of flowers ; and 
the man of fifty, of those whom the Germans 
call " innocent,*' with whose ungainly figure 
and gruff voice go the honest blue eyes of a 
child, their dumb, pathetic language outweigh- 
ing all poverty of nature and taint of blood. 

Looking at these men with quick under- 
standing as well as keen insight, exchanging 
with them the few simple and kindly words 
which occasion may demand or opportunity 
allow, the pure-minded and disinterested ob- 
server may well come nearer to their truest 
and best selves than the mere employer, how- 
ever kind and considerate, with whom the ser- 
vant is necessarily placed before the man. 



48 JOURNAL OF 

And when, as not infrequently happens, the 
members of a household are surprised and 
touched by a story of manly courage or unself- 
ish devotion on the part of one whom they 
have not been slow to condemn, the words of 
the sage may well be remembered, that he 
whose sympathy goes lowest is the one from 
whom kings have the most to fear. 

With all who acknowledge the farmer's vo- 
cation to feed and clothe and warm mankind, 
the home is the true and only centre of his far- 
reaching industries, and the workers within 
bear the closest relations to those without. 
The maids, it is certain, are nothing inferior to 
the men in local coloring of speech and man- 
ner, or in striking developments of character; 
and as to their share of the world's work, I 
cannot help thinking it a mistake to leave it 
almost wholly in-doors. 

That some of them are able and willing to 
do more I know from one who is not herself 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 49 

a bad type of her class of New England girls 
— hardy, intelligent, quick and deft of eye and 
hand. She likes a man's work best, she says, 
and tells me how she cultivated a patch of po- 
tatoes one year, plowing, hoeing, all with her 
own hands, and did not find it harder than 
washing, ironing, sweeping, bread-making and 
such-like feminine accomplishments. Much 
farm-work is, of course, far lighter than this, 
and with its immense advantages over house- 
work of light and air and space and, even in 
hot weather, a more healthful and evenly-dis- 
tributed temperature, with its comparative 
freedom from wearing strain of body or mind, 
this field ought surely to be open to women 
of our day and generation. 

More than this : it seems to me that we owe 
it to these country girls and boys to train 
them in our service, and, if possible, to employ 
the raw material all about us, both out-doors 
and in, encouraging native talent of whatever 
sort, discouraging all evil ways, and seeking to 
teach the best methods in everything. Of 



50 JOURNAL OF 

course, in many cases there will be partial fail- 
ure ; in some the love of excitement or of drink 
will be unsubdued at last ; some, through mere 
idleness and incompetence, will drop away ; 
but patience, energy and kindliness must, af- 
ter all, be crowned with some measure of 
success. 

So true it is that from character-study of any 
earnest sort, there grows up a live human in- 
terest, and a strong impulse to help and com- 
fort our fellow-creatures with that best of aid 
which is based on a sympathetic understanding 
of their wants and a wide knowledge of human 
nature. 

It is not everybody — no, not even in the 
country — who is up early enough to enjoy the 
morning milking, with its fine accompani- 
ment of bird-solo and chorus ; its warm, new 
sense of the purity and refreshment of the 
night. But the coming home of the cows at 
evening, the sweet jangle of cow-bells, and the 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER, 5 1 

slow saunter up the long meadow and down 
the road is a treat more to our liking, so that 
to-night we followed our pets to the barn- 
yard gate, and stroking the white star on 
Daisy's forehead, saw the equally gentle 
milker (man, not maid, alas !) *' drum in the 
pail with the flashing streams/* Then we 
went round to the kitchen door to get a 
draught of the new milk, willingly shared with 
pretty Puss, who rubbed and purred against 
our ankles ; and when the brimming pailful 
was strained and put away, we lingered still 
about the clean, sweet-smelling dairy, to follow 
on in imagination the pleasant' processes of 
butter-making. How often had we seen the 
''wrinkled skins'* of thick golden cream re- 
moved by a practised hand and emptied from 
the jar into the churn in the cool of the early 
morning ; or the slow crank turned with a 
measured sound to the words of the old song, 
" Come, butter, come ! ** And, as likely as 
not, a veritable *' Peter ** stood '' waiting for 
buttermilk*' at the gate. 



52 JOURNAL OF 

But how soon the tiny globules began to 
separate and the butter to harden, dashed with 
buckets full of fresh cold water from the well, 
and skilfully manipulated into a waxy yellow 
mass, with the proper proportion of fine salt ! 
Musing thus, we turned to the broad shelf 
close by, where lay a firm smooth roll, with all 
the appetizing savor of succulent June grass, 
and the delicacy of red clover; while the pig's 
pail of *Moppered *' milk outside looked 
smooth and palatable, and with the round 
white balls of curd in the chicken-dish in- 
sured a liberal supply of creature comforts at 
the ** second table '' of farm servants and de- 
pendants. 

Dear to the heart of every farmer's boy or 
girl, if not absolutely important to the econ- 
omy of the farm, is the pretty brown partridge, 
the wild hen of the woods. "' He saw the 
partridge drum in the woods " is one of the 
tests which Emerson applies to the true forest 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 53 

seer; and who that visits their haunts in the 
mating season has not heard that peculiar res- 
onant sound, and tracked it vainly through 
the echoing mazes of the hills ? Vainly, at 
least, I imagine, for I myself have never suc- 
ceeded, and the closest observer of wild life 
that I know has described to me his one ex- 
perience of the kind. 

Later come the small and deftly hidden 
nests, hollowed out of the soft forest mold 
like a turkey's, and lined with leaves and 
feathers ; and then the round white eggs, in 
number usually twelve or more. These are 
not infrequently found here, and I confess to 
having once tried the oft-repeated experiment 
of setting the eggs under a hen — and failed, 
of course. The cunningest thing I have heard 
of in that line, however, was the work of an 
enterprising youth who replaced the stolen 
treasures with as many bantam's eggs. The 
mother hen soon lost her baby-birds, but the 
partridge led off a brood of tiny chicks and 
was never heard of more ! 



54 JOURNAL OF 

Now it is that stray frequenters of forest 
paths, where the laurel lifts its regal head and 
the ground is covered with luxuriant growths 
of leaf and flower and fern, may startle una- 
wares a timid yet imperious little mother, who 
flies at the intruder with outstretched wings, 
rufifling and clucking, then hurriedly retreats 
again ; while the half-grown children cling 
motionless to the ground in obedience to her 
well-known notes of danger. 

Prettier even than these are the newly- 
hatched birds of a day or two old, in the soft- 
est of wood-browns, with limpid hazel eyes. 
And yet we, who pretend to be shocked at the 
hardihood of the sturdy wood-chopper who 
took home a hatful of partridge eggs for sup- 
per, and found them delicious, make an end of 
all this beauty and wildness in the interest of 
the sportsman's gun and the farm-boy's snare ! 

Striving for a bare subsistence, or by service or command, 
Lo ! a Power beyond our working takes the tools from either 
hand ; 



A FARMER* S DAUGHTER, 55 

Music hid in nests of sparrows, grasses tipped with purple 

bloom, 
Whisper of the joys of waiting, and the sure rewards to 

come ! 

In the meadow king-cups glisten ; headlong daisies nod 

reply ; 
Clovers warm and trembling hare-bells 'change a greeting 

swift and shy ; 
Milk-white moths go stumbling blindly through the foam upon 

its brim ; 
Swallows dip in magic circles, bounded by its silver rim. 

In the pasture burnished beetles, clad in armor, meet and 

pass ; 
Berries redden, coyly hiding in the short and tangled grass ; 
There a nest of woven fibers and four freckled eggs I found. 
Dashed to bits one frail thing, slipping thro' my fingers to the 

ground. 

In the field the \idnds of heaven, on their broad wings glid- 
ing by, 

Flash in rippled gleams and shadows through the tall and 
bearded rye ; 

And bright blades of emerald, pushing from their rustling 
sheaths again. 

All their hilts set thick with diamonds, drink the sunlight and 
the rain. 

Striving for a bare subsistence, or by service or command, 
Lo ! a Power beyond our working takes the tools from either 

hand ; 
Music hid in nests of sparrows, grasses tipped with purple 

bloom. 
Whisper of the joys of waiting, and the sure rewards to 

come ! 



56 JOURNAL OF 

The trimming and clearing up of forests for 
convenience or ** looks " is to my mind wanton 
cruelty — so much so that the same wood felled 
to the ground is in truth less painful to me. 

That varied and beautiful undergrowth pe- 
culiar to the temperate zone, rounding out the 
retiring ranks of tree-stems with clumps of 
dogwood and azalea, how is it possible to see 
it destroyed without a pang? That is gratui- 
tous insult, but the wood-chopper's trade is 
quite another thing — destruction, it is true, 
but honest and outright at least. 

In the short sunny afternoons of winter, 
when the snow lay not too deep, it was not 
unusual for us to hear from some lonely clear- 
ing 

** The foolish screaming of the jay, 
The chopper's axe-stroke far away." 

And now great brush heaps and scarred 
alder stumps and half-piled wood, with here 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 57 

and there a dark, perfect cone in sharp relief 
against the dun hillside, are all that remain. 

The men are busy there still, however, for 
the burning of the charcoal is near at hand, 
and a single day with hammer and nails will 
suffice to put up the rude framework of their 
hut, where they cook by day and sleep by 
night in the smoke of the pits. A strange, 
wild life is the collier's, exciting at tinjes, and 
even perilous, when a pit "blows out ''with a 
loud explosion, scattering firebrands far and 
near, or the treacherous crust gives way be- 
neath their feet. But some evening soon I 
must pay them a visit and see for myself. 

After all the blame and ridicule which the 
** fishing farmer'* has not unjustly received, I 
may be wrong in giving him a place in my 
record of farm events ; but it is certainly hard 
to find fault with one who lives on the borders 
of the clearest and wildest of trout streams, if 
he is occasionally caught dropping a line into 



S8 JOURNAL OF 

its brown still pools and brawling eddies. For 
the lonely pleasure and excitement of trout- 
ing, as every true fisherman knows, lies quite 
as much in the border tangle of leaf and 
flower, the carol of the thrush, and the shy, 
perplexing movements of the oven bird, as in 
the hidden beauties whose speckled sides gleam 
through the silvery current. 

We have one or two famous fishermen in 
our neighborhood — of the kind that are born, 
not made ; without costly equipment, but often 
with a string of fish ^' as long as your arm.** 
One of these brought us, years ago, a magnifi- 
cent trout, — I will not pretend to say how much 
it weighed, but it was a trophy to be displayed 
before the envious and admiring eyes of a 
rustic crowd. In the midst of our apprecia- 
tion of this prize (possibly heightened by the 
fact that we had company to dinner), we saw, 
with what speechless horror, that the man, 
neither uncivilized enough to- leave it in a state 
of nature, nor civilized enough to dress it in- 
telligently, had cut off its head ! 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 59 

** Where is the head?" was demanded in 
tragic tones. 

*' I — I don't know, ma'am," was the startled 
reply. 

" Well, go and find it, if it's a possible 
thing!" and the poor man, astonished beyond 
measure, complied and soon returned with the 
head, which was sewn on and borne in triumph 
to the table, to be duly admired and wondered 
at by a roomful of unsuspecting guests. 

But a fish of that size is more to be looked 
at than eaten, any day ; and what could be 
better for a June breakfast or supper than a 
relish of small trout, crisp and dainty, and ex- 
quisite in flavor ? And who but the farmer, 
who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, 
has a natural and inalienable right to those 
delicate wild mouthfuls of fruit and game, 
which are always to be had for the taking? 

** When the forest shall mislead me, 
When the night and morning lie. 
When sea and land refuse to feed me, 

'Twill be time enough to die," — [Emerson. 



6o JOURNAL OF 

There is no little difference of opinion 
among lovers of out-of-door life as to whether 
such life is more fully enjoyed with or without 
a personal motive, apart from the mere pur- 
pose of enjoyment. For my own part, I find 
that that delicious sense of abandon which 
most of us court comes oftenest unsought, and 
in the way of some thoroughly congenial occu- 
pation. 

I wish it were possible to write the record 
of that never-to-be-forgotten June day when 
three of us rose at daylight, and trailing through 
the long grass heavy with dew, across the 
brook and up the rocky road, came out upon 
the steep slope of that mountain pasture where 
the strawberries hung ripe and tempting 
among their three-cleft crimson leaves. The 
air was filled with the sweet clangor of birds, 
the daisies hung their heads above the damp, 
chilly ground; but steadily we picked through 
the morning twilight till the sky grew beauti- 
ful with sunrise, and the long, slanting rays re- 
vived our drooping spirits. Drenched to the 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 6 1 

waist with dew we grouped ourselves below 
the meadow bars and soon grew warm and dry, 
while all sense of ache or weariness gave place 
to a delicious glow and tingle in every limb. 
There on the short grass, basking in the sun, 
we ate a breakfast of bread and fruit mois- 
tened with clear, cool water from the brook ; 
then, rested and refreshed, went on to fill our 
pails, pick flowers and chase butterflies, or 
paddle in the water and creep barefooted over 
the stones till noon. 

But this is only one of many long mornings 
and afternoons given each year to this delight- 
ful labor, which is also freshest pastime ; and 
its many phases of vigorous and healthful en- 
joyment must be known to be appreciated. 
Our '^ bonny Kate '' whinnies low and tosses 
her chestnut mane on the outskirts of the past- 
ure, or gallops playfully about her pretty colt, 
caressing and chiding it by turns. Her well- 
formed limbs are round and handsome now, 
and her smooth coat shines like satin. At the 
low, tangled border of the alder lot appears 



62 JOURNAL OF 

the graceful head of Buttercup or Daisy, and 
catching up an empty pail we take from the 
gentle creature, who munches unconcernedly 
on, a warm, refreshing draught. 

Then there is sociable chatter and fun going 
on between the pickers, who creep about on 
hands and knees, spying out the dewy scarlet 
berries, and those others with head bent, 
stained lap, and rosy-tipped fingers, who part 
from each its tiny green hull, and enjoy to the 
full their tantalizing odor. And there is pleas- 
ure of still another sort in looking up the 
broad slope opposite, crowned with a low 
brown cottage embowered in trees ; in seeing 
the men at work in the neighboring fields, and 
hearing their ringing shouts made musical by 
the distance. 

With work like this one easily forgets, you 
say, a true and just adaptation of means to 
end ; but we shall count you answered unless 
you care to refuse the delicious portion set 
apart for tea, and to sneer at warmth and 
summer fragrance sealed up in glass jars for 
the bleak December weather. 



A FARMER'S DA UGIITER. d^ 

While looking over the seedsmen's cata- 
logues this season (a pastime, by the way, in 
which I only indulge under protest, but which 
some people find wonderfully absorbing), I 
hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry at the 
large number of wild flowers whose names ap- 
peared, usually marked by the most patroniz- 
ing kindness, which read absurdly enough, to 
be sure, but from a florist was quite a conde- 
scension, I suppose. 

On the one hand, one hates to see the snowy 
bloodroot and the delicate vernal blossom of 
the spring beauty, the shy and stately mocca- 
sin flower, and the many-colored beauty of the 
asters, translated into Latin polysyllables and 
paraded among cobeas and nolanas and thun- 
bergias, with a price affixed to each. 

But then, on the other, it is good to know 
that our native blossoms are gaining wider ap- 
preciation, and we can but hope that people 
will find a better way than to range them 



64 JOURNAL OF 

stiffly and painfully in beds and flower-borders, 
choosing rather to study them with patience 
and humility in their own wild haunts. For if 
half the time given to experimenting with 
brilliant and tender exotics, which were never 
meant to grow in our cold climate, were spent 
more wisely in making the acquaintance of our 
neighbors and kinsfolk, and encouraging them, 
so far as possible, on our own domain, the re- 
sult would be of value to many. 

The present method of gardening reminds 
one of a child*s pebble-marked boundaries and 
twig plantations, so trifling is it and so incon- 
sequent ; and most of our gardens, indeed, are 
a very indifferent substitute for the green vel- 
vet turf which they displace on our lawns and 
pleasure grounds. 

Talking of gardens, I am tempted to write 
down a conversation which occupied, in fact, 
my morning thoughts, while leaning from my 
window before the bell rang, and listening to 
that 



A FA RMER' S DA UGH TER, 6 5 

" Sound to rout the brood of cares, 

The sweep of scythes in morning dew ! " 

It was something like this: 

/ (contemplatively). — Well, it is certainly- 
fortunate for those among us who have eyes 
and ears that the scythe is not allowed to rust 
on the bough, but retains in our door-yards the 
post of honor, as forerunner of the mowing- 
machines, — 

** To show that costly summer is at hand ! " 

J/y^^//* (aggressively).-^Yes, you are always 
sentimentalizing about the *^ environment ; '* 
you object to front gates, lawns and shrub- 
bery, while, for my part, I dislike a rough, un- 
kempt turf, and prefer garden-rollers and lawn- 
mowers. Look at those girls who rose at five, 
tucked up their dresses, and went down on 
hands and knees in the damp grass ; they are 
coming in now to wash their hands after weed- 
ing half round the beds before breakfast. 
Now, that^s what I call pluck ! 

/. — Yes, I do object to a stiff and artificial 



66 JOURNAL OF 

arrangement of grounds ; to my mind the un- 
mistakable signs of human habitation should 
melt into the landscape by imperceptible de- 
grees. And as to weeds — 

Myself, — As to weeds, I suppose you will say 
that there is no such thing ; that one green 
thing is as good as another. If you would 
only acknowledge some principle of selection ! 

/. — ^Your theory is, at all events, as true of 
plants as it is of men ; but people are apt, in 
both cases, to make a distinction without a dif- 
ference. By pulling up one thing and putting 
in another, you make an attempt to vindicate 
your own taste ; but I will say that such taste 
is, in all probability, a false one. 

At this point the bell rings, and conversa- 
tion is dropped. 

** A swarm of bees in May 
Is worth a load of hay ; 
A swarm of bees in June 
Is worth a silver spoon." 

—[Old Proverb.] 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 67 

Our quiet household, with its steady corps of 
workers within and without, has been greatly 
demoralized this morning by a new and pleas- 
ant excitement which I hasten to relate in the 
vivid and fragmentary manner in which it has 
just flashed through my brain. 

First of all, then, comes papa from his peace- 
ful occupation of hoeing, and, as if seized with 
temporary insanity, drums wildly with the un- 
offending instrument of his labor on a tin pan. 
Loud shouts follow, and frantic performances 
on a dinner horn, till, rushing to the door in 
bewilderment and alarm, a strange sight meets 
our eyes. A cloud of bees drifts slowly to the 
south, greeted rather too officiously, perhaps, 
by ail this noise of welcome and these shovel- 
fuls of earth flung high into the air by half a 
dozen men. 

It is not long till pursued and pursuers dis- 
appear below the hill, and five minutes later 
the good news comes with a returning scout 
that the bees have settled. That live black 
cluster on the overhanging branch of a lofty 



6S JOURNAL OF 

maple, in shape like a gigantic pear, we find to 
be already the focus of an admiring group, 
which has also a rough picturesqueness of its 
own. Five or six bronzed and bearded men 
** stand around " in the road or lounge about 
the stone wall, staring up into the tree with 
loudly-expressed interest, while at a little 
distance stand the women ; one with a rather 
pretty, bold face, round blue eyes, and cluster- 
ing rings of light brown hair, one smaller and 
more childish-looking, but dull and stolid in 
demeanor, and another with peering eyes and 
sharp, old-looking features behind a green 
Shaker bonnet, — all three surrounded by a 
yelping cur and some dirty bare-foot children. 
In agreement with the homely, practical wis- 
dom of the men, who appear at their best in 
an emergency like the present, a hive is brought 
(rubbed out with apple-leaves), a white cloth 
spread, a saw produced, and one of their num- 
ber proceeds to sever the limb. Soon a loud 
crackling is heard, a noise, and a running to 
and fro, and the great bough gives way ; but 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER, 69 

with a mighty subdued sound of humming the 
bees rise up again, and circling through the air 
in a seemingly inextricable tangle, pitch at last 
upon a still higher and more perilously slender 
branch. Clambering fearlessly up to the very 
top of the tree, an agile lad leans forward on 
the heavily laden bough and breaks off the 
bending twig with its precious freight. Let 
down from hand to hand and limb to limb, 
breathlessly followed by many eager eyes, it 
reaches the ground in safety, and is placed be- 
neath the hive ! Then what a shout of exulta- 
tion goes up, and what a buzz of excitement 
follows, during which we slip quietly away, 
feeling more than rewarded for our somewhat 
erratic attempts at bee-keeping by the fresh 
and unexpected pleasure in this pretty rural 
scene of hiving the bees. 



JULY. 

IN the breezy summer mornings, when a 
myriad of green leaves stir softly on rich- 
ly canopied boughs, and the meadows are crisp 
with nodding-fruited grasses, and all in their 
glistening prime, a not unpleasing accompani- 
ment to the twitter of birds and the boom of 
insects is the musical hum of the mowing ma- 
chine. Shading my eyes with one hand, I look 
across at the clumsy-wheeled vehicle, with a 
steady pair of sober old horses, and a man 
perched jauntily atop, catching now and then 
the steely glitter of saw-toothed knives, and 
hearkening to the loud continuous drone of 
smoothrunning machinery. 

But few of us are satisfied with looking, and 
70 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER, 71 

however picturesque the scene from vine-shaded 
lattice and marble threshold, the hay-field is 
itself a lovelier trysting-place. Following in 
the wake of the team along the fresh-cut 
swathe, we stoop to gather up a handful of 
the dainty field flowers, too willingly let die. 
This pale lobelia, with its slender loose spike 
of delicate blue ; the darker and denser purple 
of this rough-leaved heal-all ; these daisies, au- 
dacious, yet fine and tremulous as well, and 
these brown papery heads of yellow clover ! 
How subtly charming their natural mingling 
with airy purplish panicles of grass, and how 
soon, alas ! the modest and attractive garland, 
** so light, so cool with dew,*' wilts in the direct 
rays of the noonday sun ! 

Along the hedges a fringe of ferns sets off 
the delicate rose of dogbane, and the creamy 
white of the broad-bosomed elder ; while rasp- 
berries hang their tempting clusters on many a 
leafy spray, and for the venturesome palate 
there are drooping stems of dark astringent 
choke-cherries to be had for the tasting. Or 



72 JOURNAL OF 

when the creaking hay-rake, like a huge spider, 
tilts up and down the field, we fall at length on 
the long windrow, a warm, luxurious cushion 
along the dry stubble, and lie with eyes closed 
and hats pulled down upon our foreheads, in- 
haling the fine scent of new-mown hay, and 
basking in the afternoon sun. 

There is surely a delicious something which 
is both rest and freedom in the very blissful 
abandon so faintly shadowed forth above ; yet 
after two days of unrestrained gypsying, one is 
fain to believe it only a distant prelude or soft 
accompaniment to the real drama whose act- 
ors move and whose scenes are shifted before 
our very eyes. It is well that the mechanical 
advances of an ingenious age have not wholly 
destroyed the poetry of labor, and notwith- 
standing a noticeable absence of hand work, 
together with the rude grace of rakes and 
scythes, the time of hay-making may perhaps 
present more broad and varied attractions than 



A FA RMER S DA UGH TER, 7 3 

any other special season. The work itself, it 
is said, has lost much of its early importance, 
while gaining wonderfully in ease and rapid- 
ity ; and still there are long, hot days in the 
hay-field, broken only by the sound of the din- 
ner-horn or by an occasional gulp of root beer 
or '' sweetened water '' from the covered pail 
in the maple shade. 

The early stages of the work already hinted 
at are full of an indescribable freshness and 
charm ; but with the heaping into cocks comes 
the heyday of the children. What merry 
romps are now in order, what games of '^ hide- 
and-seek," or '' puss-in-the-corner," till, flushed 
and heated, crumpled and berry-stained, they 
are lifted to the top of the swaying load and 
borne in triumph to the mow ! 

Accidents, too, will happen in the hay-field, 
even among the four-leaf clovers, and the 
goldy grasses, and the pale-green katydids; 
dresses will get torn, and brown locks filled 
with hay-seed ; and once a tiny pin, a grass- 
green beetle set in gold, was dropped on top 



74 JOURNAL OF 

of a load, and, sifting through to the ground, 
was picked up uninjured next morning. 

But the softest and most sylvan charm of 
all is reserved for the tender twilight, when its 
votaries are pillowed on yielding heaps scat- 
tered through the fragrant dusk about the 
meadow, when myriad fire-flies flash and tingle 
amid the green, and the touch of a sleeve in 
the dark brings a sense of nearness which 
months of commonplace daily contact cannot 
give. 

A PARTY of three are seated comfortably at 
a long table in the outer kitchen this sultry 
July morning, with a basketful of cherries be- 
tween them, while* another is hovering over the 
fire, with hot cheeks and purple fingers, or 
pouring the rich syrup over the pale, translu- 
cent globes. A pretty scene, it might be 
said ; yet it is only an explanatory note to the 
charming episode of yesterday, when this same 
trio of girls set out over a lonely, beautiful 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 75 

road, to find a hospitable farm-house, sur- 
rounded by trees whose over-arching boughs 
might safely be rifled of their tempting freight. 

There, indeed, it lay in the boundless splen- 
dor of a perfect afternoon ; on one side the 
comfortable, old-fashioned dwelling, with its 
quaint parterre of bright-hued flowers and 
rows of brown bee-hives ; on the other, the 
outlying barns and stables, while beyond and 
behind them stretched the steep and winding 
road, lined with daisies and thistles and black- 
cap raspberries, and irregularly bordered by a 
magnificent spreading cherry-tree in every bit 
of ruined wall and overgrown fence-corner. 
Against more than one of these was placed a 
ladder, and eager eyes gazed up through the 
interwoven branches where hung the smooth 
and polished spheres, white and scarlet and 
purple, amid their pointed green and shining 
leaves. 

Then sure feet touched the rounds and step- 
ped from swaying limb to limb, and girls with 
parted lips and laughing eyes went singing up 



76 JOURNAL OF 

and down ; now standing on tiptoe and cling- 
ing by one hand to the interlacing boughs, now 
seated in a crotch of the tree and reaching 
above and below with pliant wrists and slender 
fingers. No wonder that the baskets, swung 
here and there, were rapidly filled by practised 
hands, while one, less bold or less skilful than 
the others, remained seated on the topmost 
round of the ladder, and, having stripped the 
lowest branches and tasted of their purple 
store, took in the pretty moving picture in the 
tree and the sound of ringing voices, with true 
Bohemian pleasure. 

And later, when the active limbs grew weary 
and the pickers descended, heaped baskets, 
crowned with full and perfect clusters, were 
hung on either arm and lifted to the back of 
the wagon, together with massive piles of 
creamy chestnut blossoms above their pyra- 
mids of leaves. Was ever draught so welcome 
as that from the old-fashioned pump in the 
yard, which overflowed its battered tin cup and 
splashed over dress and ankles ; or better still. 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER. 77 

the refreshing glimpses of quaint humor and 
homely New England character in the pithy- 
sayings and kindly, rugged faces of our some- 
time entertainers ? 

Then, too, the long drive homeward was 
fresh and wild enough, with frequent stoppages 
by the roadside for wished-for handfuls of 
flowers and berries, with sudden raids on neigh- 
boring woods and meadows, and even a mad- 
cap ride on the harnessed back of our patient 
Dobbin, with one hand tightened in the bridle 
and one foot resting on the shaft. And, sweet- 
est of all, at the close of a day like this, the 
frugal yet sufficient repast of bread and milk 
and fruit, the delicious weariness that insures a 
no less delicious repose, and the swift, uncon- 
scious sinking to a light and dreamless slum- 
ber. 

One of the brightest and prettiest transfor- 
mation scenes of the hay-making season is 
that which comes out in life-like colors under 
the threatening skies of a warm July day. 



78 JOURNAL OF 

Early in the afternoon there are " thunder 
heads *' to be seen above the far horizon, — 
volcanic heaps of bright white cloud in a daz- 
zlingly blue sky ; but several hours of sunshine 
intervene before a gathering sweep of black- 
ness frowns ominous behind the nearer moun- 
tains, and low, indistinct mutterings portend a 
coming storm. Then the light, loose-jointed 
hay-wagon is brought out, and other work, of 
whatever sort, is suspended, while all hands 
huddle into cocks the half-cured hay, and tum- 
ble all that will possibly do upon the rack, so 
that load after load goes staggering up the hill 
and into the barn. In such hurried movements 
as these before a storm, it may be that some 
luckless wight has stabbed his hand with a 
hay-fork ; or a load has been heedlessly upset, 
perhaps, in turning a sharp corner, burying 
one or more in its fall, and increasing tenfold 
the scramble and confusion. 

But sooner or later there comes a crash, the 
rain descends in sheeted silver, and the unwil- 
ling oxen are goaded into a run, till laughing, 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 79 

shouting, singing, men and teams are all under 
shelter, and whether the choicest clover-hay be 
out or in, the uncaring storm sweeps by. 

The day is hot and still and dry ; 

The sun beats down with blinding glare 
On visible white waves of air. 

The bright reluctant stream curves by, 
Between broad banks with green o'erlaid, 
And round-topped willows* sultry shade. 

For this the mower left his swathe, 

And stretched his tired limbs and quaffed 
A warm and unrefreshing draught. 

Here children knelt beside the pool, 
And the bright water, unaware. 
Streamed from their long and shining hair. 

The traveller caught with feverish haste 
Those lifeless drops the stagnant spring 
Unto his burning palm could bring. 

Pity our soul's consuming pain, 

O guardian of these streams accurst, 
And brew a cup to quench this thirst ' 

She cast us one reviving look, — 
Then, as she secret virtues knew 
In every tree or flower that grew. 



8o JOURNAL OF 

Sought first the rough and sterile soil, 
Which only stubborn growth allows, 
And broke the spruce and hemlock boughs. 

By roadsides ankle-deep in dust, 
She strove to mingle in her search 
The sassafras and slender birch. 

She stooped to pull the yellow dock, 
Whose root a wholesome bitter knew, 
And tonic dandelion too ; 

Or, daintier grown, essayed to find 

Wild ginger, Cicely's flowering strings, 
And twenty sweet and spicy things. 

The roots she cut, the bark she stripped. 
The leaves and stems by handfuls took, 
And washed them in the running brook. 

Then left to steep in water clear. 
On a slow fire they simmered long, 
And made the liquor black and strong. 

Sweetened and spiced, with little more 
Save water added (and a soul !), 
An earthen jar received the whole. 

One day and night, in hidden cells 
Her secret processes went on ; 
Till, the slight fermentation done. 

The offered cup had touched our lips, — 
A green tinged liquor, sparkling clear, 
A cooling draught of forest beer 1 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 8i 

A FIELD of ripened, sun-steeped grain, with 
the grass-green and the sky-blue all about it, 
and an indigo-bird perched on a bending ear, 
his glossy plumage and elegance of form en- 
hancing the most exquisite of accidental con- 
trasts ! 

And again, the same rye evenly cut in long, 
full sweeps, and the reapers advancing in per- 
fect time to a slow-rounded rhythm of volup- 
tuous ease, — or so it appears to the simply 
passive beholder. For always in observing 
the firm supple action of well-made limbs, 
there is apparent a sort of luxury of motion, 
which can only be explained by the actual 
luxury attending the trained exercise of bodily 
powers. 

But how can I look at this long as picture 
or pastime, how keep myself from trying to 
realize how much it means to them ! There is 
something suggestive, to begin with, in the 
evident and striking contrast between the rude. 



82 JOURNAL OF 

awkward, shambling lad, and the man who is 
master of himself and all that he undertakes. 
Now that I think of it, I cannot but feel my 
own inferiority, and so suddenly recallthe al- 
most pathetic earnestness of the little girl 
whom I overheard saying to her baby brother : 
" You're a mait^ F^n only a girl ! " 

When the last load of hay has creaked and 
rumbled on the barn floor, when the horses 
have long since been ridden to water and 
turned out to grass, when the men have gone 
singing down from their work, and a long, low 
whistle, gurgling and musical as the unwritten 
notes of birds, rises above the sound of depart- 
ing footsteps, then, if ever, may we turn from 
the well-earned rest of the farmer to the collier 
keeping his lonely vigil beneath the summer 
stars. 

Last night the unraked hay lay damp with 
dew about our ankles, and tripped us now and 
again in its fragrant meshes ; the shivering al- 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER, 83 

ders, huddled in the blackness, touched with 
wan lips the sunless water ; and crossing one 
by one its rocky shallows we kept toward the 
the little cluster of pits against the side of the 
mountain. Over them hung a cloud of smoke 
which obscured the stars and swathed the 
opaque cold moon in bluish vapor, and the 
fumes of burning charcoal, strongest and subt- 
lest of pungent woodland odors, rose to our 
nostrils with overpowering force. Groping 
about in the shadowy light, we stumbled first 
upon a burnt-out pit, coated with fine gray 
ashes, and bordered with rakings from the 
lower stratum of coal. How perfectly molded 
the ringed wood and rough effigy of bark, and 
how exquisite the traces of blue-black bloom 
on that hard and polished surface ! 

Following backward, with unabated interest, 
the several stages of the work, we gazed in turn 
upon a mound of black earth lately fired, and 
another not yet covered. That regular, even 
pile, carried in straight, smooth layers to the 
very top pole, with glistenings of silver birch 



84 JOURNAL OF 

among its small round alders, made a pleasant 
relief in color from the general uniformity, 
and, as we v/ere not slow to discover, lay at 
just the right angle for a comfortable reclining- 
chair. 

A little aside from the dense overhanging 
smoke, with a group of sheltering trees behind 
it, stood the collier's hut, a square, plain cabin 
of bright new boards, having a low door closed 
by a rude device of bended twigs, and above 
it a sufficient opening for the admission of air 
and light. The furnishings within were doubt- 
less primitive enough — a heap of straw, a tat- 
tered blanket, a three-legged stool, perhaps; 
and outside a rusty little stove furnished the 
missing link with civilization — where an open 
fire-place would have been nearly as convenient 
and far more picturesque. 

From this temporary cover came the sound 
of voices, one rapid and high-pitched, one gruff 
and slow, and with them the yelping of a mon- 
grel cur, and frequent intervals of laughter, 
shrill and mirthless from one, boisterous and 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 85 

hearty from the other. Questions were put 
and freely answered in rude vernacular and 
homely, striking language, which yet presumed 
too much on any special knowledge in the lis- 
teners ; for the parlance of ''the bush** is al- 
most as puzzling to the uninitiated as sailors* 
jargon or artists* slang. The men, however, 
showed a thorough familiarity with their work, 
which was not unmixed with the well- earned 
satisfaction of an honest pride. And we were 
even told of one who liked the smell of smoke 
" better than a good dinner.** 

Out of the woods at last, we sauntered home- 
ward in the white moonlight, picked the chance 
daisy silvered in its rays, and where the dusk 
meadow tossed her scented locks we held sweet 
converse of things far removed from the smoul- 
dering passion and stifled fear of the pits, or 
the rough-clad charcoal-burner*s lonely hut. 

" I delve in the mountain's dark recess, 
And build my fires in the wilderness ; 
The red rock crumbles beneath my blast, 
While the tall trees tremble and stand aghast. 



S6 JOURNAL OF 

At midnight's hour my furnace glows, 
And the liquid ore in red streams flows, 
Till the mountain's heart is melted down, 
And seared by fire is its sylvan crown." 

J. E. Dow. 

There are deep, long ruts in the smooth 
country roads, where the heavy wheels are 
grinding them down, and the rumbling coal 
wagons are almost daily encountered on lonely 
walks, or heard for a moment in passing, as 
they rattle along the level and slowly zigzag 
down the hills. 

That hard-working team of swaying oxen or 
laboring horses, those huge black wagons piled 
with shining coal, those grimy, sooty men in 
red shirts and slouched hats, whose rough, 
bearded faces and bold or cunning eyes look 
strange and uncanny enough with such black 
surroundings, is it of them that we muse so 
deeply in the hemlock shade beside the spring ? 

Rather do we think of the fair young trees, 
alive and tingling with sap, which are hacked 
and hewn and stripped of their delicate fine 
spray of leaves and branches, that these lumps 
of black earth may go to feed the hungry fur- 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 87 

naces and turn the yellow ore into bars of red- 
hot iron. 

Not till the snow flies, they tell me, will the 
work of destruction be done ; so that under 
the dewy skies of June and the frosty ones of 
October, in the long summer twilights and 
shortening autumn days, the wonderful trans- 
formation will still go on ; and when that little 
tract is cold and bare, in acres of untouched 
w^oodland the finger of spring will create a 
greenness and a splendor which no mortal 
magic of months or weeks could render a more 
bewitching surprise. 

Voices of the night and day, 

Of the earth and sky, 
Meet and mingle in the lay 

Which I fain would try ; 
Grief and gladness crossed by time 

Hold my fleeting breath 
To a wordless chant sublime. 

Strong with life and death: 

Hiss of tongues and whir of wings, 

Ceaseless stir and beat, 
Myriad winged and creeping^ things 

Droning through the heat ; 



88 JOURNAL OF 

Chirp of crickets, hum of bees, 

All the drowsy din 
Rocked by winds among the trees, 

Strive to enter in. 

Call of birds from upper air — 

Swiff dissolving height — 
Weighted with a dumb despair. 

Winged for instant flight ; 
Ah, behind that leafy screen, 

One, with wounded breast. 
Lingers, trembling and unseen. 

By her empty nest ! 

Sounds of human joy or strife. 

Tidal ebb and flow. 
Vast unlanguaged sea of life, 

Tossing to and fro ; 
Voices struck in rude accord. 

Pitched or low or high, 
Though no whisper of a word 

Reach me where I lie. 

Voices of the night and day. 

Of the earth and sky. 
Meet and mingle in the lay 

Which I fain would try ; 
Grief and gladness crossed by time 

Hold my fleeting breath 
To a wordless chant sublime. 

Strong with life and death. 

A FAIR example of the useful and ordinary 
in farming is found in the almost universal 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER, 89 

potato crop, whose white or rosy tubers grow 
and ripen below the surface, and whose trim 
rows of bright green tops are scarcely an orna- 
ment at the best. There is much hard work in 
the potato field for man and beast ; work, too, 
of a thoroughly commonplace order and quite 
unattractive to the looker-on, except as he is 
interested in each and every department of 
honest labor. 

The quarrelling with petty nuisances is al- 
ways a thankless office, and herein lies a trying 
and almost continual necessity of the farmer's 
position as master of the soil. There are bold 
and hardy interlopers, or rather shall we say 
rebellious subjects, who are continually disput- 
ing his claim, and for these there is no redress. 
Still it must not be forgotten that in putting 
them down he is in constant danger of destroy- 
ing the nice balance of nature, and thereby 
throwing his own affairs into even more hope- 
less disorder. 

Such difficulties as these are peculiarly 
marked in the case of potatoes, and they are 
in every respect a most exacting crop. The 



90 JOURNAL OF 

soil must be loosened and mellowed about 
their roots, while the weeds are kept from their 
borders; and when it comes to the scattering 
of poisonous purples and metallic greens, who 
would not, if they could, rebel ? I shall at all 
events refrain from describing the process ! 

She walks between the tasselled corn, 

Whose serried ranks her fair face screen ; 

She greets me with a careless scorn, 
And scornful laughter rings between. 

Black-haired, red-lipped, her dark, bright face 

The toy of every woman's whim ; 
Her form the mould of sensuous grace. 

Supple and smooth and round of limb. 

And is it Summer I behold, 

A breathing splendor, stretched and warm ? 
Within her bosom's plenteous fold 

She thrusts a brown and shapely arm. 

This harvest nymph, whose loosened braid 

Drops down a cheek of glowing tan, 
Incarnate Summer is, and made 

To satisfy the heart of man. 

Nay, but a simple country lass 

That dark abundant beauty wears ; 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 91 

Her poppied slumbers softly pass. 

The ripened harvest warmth she shares. 

Beside her couch the heat is sore, — 
Her silken couch, with green o'erlaid ; 

Those glistening spears I pass before, 
And leave unharmed my barefoot maid. 

*' The old, swallow-haunted barns^ 
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
Through which the moted sunlight streams, 
And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
The red plumes of the roosted cocks 
And the loose hay-mow's scented locks. " 

Whittier. 

It must not be supposed that the attendant 
pleasures of hay-making are quite exhausted, 
even when the meadows he ^^ shorn before 
their time/* and the mows are darkened with 
odorous heaps of new-mown hay. For to all 
who love rambling old barns, and arrive at an 
easy familiarity with ladders and lofts, there is 
a strange, dreamy fascination in lying on a 
warm and scented pile, amid broad masses of 
light and shadow, gazing at nothing with won- 
dering intentness. 



92 JOURNAL OF 

A rustle is heard in one corner, and a mouse 
creeps timidly out, only to scamper along a 
low, broad beam in the flooring, and daintily 
nibble at something in all its dust and cob- 
webs. Swallows are cheeping and twittering 
everywhere ; their nests, with the delicate, 
semi-transparent eggs, or queer, shapeless 
baby-birds, tufted with blackish down, cling 
high, cling low, to the rude, bowed cross- 
beams and rafters. 

Or rising and stumbling through the long 
twilight of the mows, crossing low scaffolding 
of bare, loose boards, and diving into dark 
recesses, we are followed by the stealthy feet 
of the old black cat, and suddenly confronted 
with the green glare of her eyes. And yet 
again, with a half-frightened cackle, a staid 
brown biddy starts up in our midst, and goes 
fluttering and tumbling out of the window, 
leaving us to search at our leisure for the pre- 
cious nestful so cunningly hidden and so un- 
expectedly discovered. 



AUGUST. 

But in the silent, dreamy weather, and 
under the hazy August skies, when the warm 
gusts sweep the chestnut wood and twinkle 
through the birches that skirt the fields, what 
can be lovelier, with the soft contour and luxu- 
rious complexion of youth, than the milky 
bloom of the bee-laden buckwheat ? 

Strolling through the orchard for an apron- 
ful of scarlet windfalls, crisp and delicate, with 
a piquant and pleasant flavor of their own, 
then clambering over a stone wall overrun with 
blackberry vines, we broke, this noon, into half 
an acre of it, — the clustering pale-green stems 
loaded with white and pinkish blossoms, and 
alive with the muffled, dreamy hum of un- 
counted bees. 

93 



94 JOURNAL OF 

What delicious repose, what absorbing idle- 
ness, to He thus pillowed on the lap of sum- 
mer, surrounded with intoxicating color and 
odor, and lulled by musical monotones of 
sound ! 

Loitering with unwilling feet beside this 
paradise of bloom, we passed too soon its 
enchanted ground, and extended our purpose- 
less yet happy wanderings to the close-shorn 
field above it, to the green, tangled hedge-rows 
and borders of woodland, painted with the low 
crest of budding golden-rod, the faint starry 
edges of early asters, and the pallid, graceful 
droop of blanching ferns. These, we said, shall 
ornament the tea-table, and the toilers of the 
day may surround them with their richer 
gains. 

Thus may we close an idle hour in the 
month of gracious giving, with dripping combs 
of amber honey, alight with the warm fra- 
grances of midsummer, with new, white milk, 
and luscious blackberries, and delicate, smooth 
rounds of cottage cheese ! 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER. 95 

Sitting in the doorway these fruitful 
August days, and leaning heavily on one arm, 
with head thrown back and half-closed eyes, I 
hear the twitter of young birds among the 
maples, the cheep of swallows in the barn-loft, 
the ^^ whit " of half-grown turkeys filing 
through the meadows in long procession, and 
the fluttering stir of baby chickens in the 
short, crisp grass. Idly I watch these midsum- 
mer broods, and dwell most fondly, as in duty 
bound, on the every-day tenants of the farm 
and recipients of its bounty, cherishing thus 

*' A nature tamed, 
And grown domestic like a barn-door fowl." 

The flocks of young turkeys now ranging 
the new-mown fields in a systematic search for 
grasshoppers, their slender, dark forms moving 
distinct and slow against the green, have cer- 
tainly less of variety than their light-minded 
cousins, the eldest of whom are already quar- 
relling playfully over some choice morsel, or 



96 JOURNAL OF 

fluttering their wings and trying a faint, shrill 
crow ! Smaller and more compactly formed, 
the rightful children of the old hen-mother are 
also more domestic in their tastes, and prefer a 
nearer range. 

But what, after all, is the care of these 
household pets to the tantalizing pleasure of 
an occasional glimpse at the interior of a bird's 
nest ! There are doubtless half a score of 
these tiny centres within a stone's throw of my 
hand, and how interesting they are even to the 
chance comer, especially now that their dainty 
fledglings are learning to fly ! Everywhere 
about the stone walls and on the sloping roofs 
we find the little trembling, palpitating crea- 
tures, and take them in our hands, perhaps, to 
smooth the ruffled wings or note the tender 
feet, curled tightly up, and the startled brown 
and shining eyes. Often at this season there 
comes a heavy storm by which many nests 
are blown down, and the helpless inmates per- 
ish of cold, of hunger and fright. '' Mouse- 
trap,*' the frolicsome black-and-white kitten, is. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 97 

moreover, a dangerous foe, though jealously 
watched by the children. 

Despite misfortunes such as these, there is 
nothing more characteristic of this golden 
month than the countless flocks, both wild and 
tame, that brood and hover beneath her shel- 
tering wings. All the woods and fields are 
astir with them, and our barns and grassy 
roadsides overrun with the little restless, chirp- 
ing things. Even for our own we need 
hardly do more than look on and listen, as I am 
doing now, so rich is the harvest of grains and 
grasses, and so myriad-voiced the insect life 
provided for their wants in that great and 
generous storehouse — out-of-doors ! 

J[ttgn$i ^0ut^«% 

We had quite a commotion, one hot after- 
noon, a day or two ago, in the sudden appear- 
ance and final extinction of a rattlesnake which 
ventured too near our tenant house, was at- 
tacked by three women with broom, poker, 
axe, and literally cut in pieces, the **men- 



98 JOURNAL OF 

folks " being " off at work '' as is usual in case 
of emergency. 

Of course the skin and head of the creature 
were conspicuously nailed to a tree ; of course 
everybody went to look at them ; of course its 
rattles were counted, its length was wrangled 
over, and of course the kitchen talk was of 
nothing else for days. 

But the most that was brought to light by 
this comparatively harmless encounter was a 
perfect nest of snake stories, of more or less 
exaggerated horrors, from the bent and griz- 
zled uncle's interminable yarns to the small 
boy*s boastful tale of hand-to-hand struggles 
with ** double-headed *' snakes and "' horned 
adders.'* There appears to be more of super- 
stitious fear on this point than attaches to any 
other subject in the minds of our people. We 
are told some things, like the story of a second 
snake that always follows its dead mate, already 
familiar in print, and others curious enough 
and almost unheard of. A bit of skin from the 
snake on the bitten spot, is said to be a sure 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER, 99 

cure for snake-bites ; and to bite through a 
rattlesnake while still warm ensures sound 
teeth for the rest of your life. 

There is also a very general impression 
among the boys and girls of this region that 
all snakes are equally deadly and terrible. 
** Green snakes/* '^ striped snakes/* '* adders** 
and all the rest are indiscriminately feared by 
the latter, and persecuted by the former with 
sticks and stones. Perhaps there is even more 
genuine terror exhibited by the barefoot girl 
going huckleberrying, than would seem to jus- 
tify the dainty shrieks of the *^ city boarder/' 

The following bit of snake-lore, which comes 
as near to poetic justice as we commonly get, 
was told me by the daughter of the chief actor, 
and carries probability on the face of it. 

An inveterate snake-hater, like most of her 
class, she observed one day a long black snake 
on the point of swallowing a toad. Boiling 
over with righteous indignation she flung a 
stone with uncalled-for violence ; but hitting it 
woman-fashion, succeeded only in killing the 



lOO JOURNAL OF 

toad, while the snake wriggled unconcernedly 
off ! This was too much to bear, and the snake 
was pursued with intentions the most murder- 
ous ; but when the defender of injured inno- 
cence came back hot and tired after a long and 
unsuccessful chase, she was, as the narrator 
expressed it, ** never so mad in her life !*' 

" Let us take for once," I said this morning 
to an imaginary listener, " let us take the place 
of the kitchen-maid or the boy who does the 
chores, and gain, if we can, a realizing sense of 
the beauty and fitness of the vegetable garden.*' 
So I caught up a basket that lay on the table, 
and pushing over her eyes a shadowy sun-bon- 
net, she followed me out of the back door and 
through a dark little alley-way lined with 
flaunting yellow sun-flowers. 

A row of small thrifty-looking currant- 
bushes came first, then the strawberry and as- 
paragus beds, whose season of usefulness was 
over ; melon vines, with their crumpled white 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, loi 

and yellowish blossoms mixed with pale-green 
globes of fruit ; squash vines, with huge golden 
cups among their broad green platters ; ivory- 
heads of cauliflower, and glowing, half-ripened 
tomatoes. White and scarlet beans on slender 
tripods bedecked the rustling ranks of corn, so 
we filled our laps with the crinkly amber silk, 
as our hands with the gem-like blossoms, and 
bit through row after row of sweet milky 
kernels in sportive liking for their crude vege- 
table taste. 

In another part of the garden were bright, 
trim rows of winter vegetables, ruddy beet-tops 
with wine-hued stems, thick-leaved onions 
crowded with dense spikes of pretty white 
blossoms ; and dividing these from the home 
potato-patch the pea-vines stretched their curl- 
ing tendrils, where here and there clung a 
belated blossom, white or purple, on butterfly 
wings. A-tiptoe with eagerness we snatched 
the emerald cases, lined with even rows, hinged 
on what airy mechanism, and closing by what 
smooth and perfect spring ! But in our 



102 JOURNAL OF 

haste we must not brush with flying finger-tips 
this nestful of young robins, whose gaping red 
throats are almost in our grasp ! Well, we saw 
much and learned more in such pleasant diver- 
sions as these, my shadowy companion and I ; 
but our late return and half-filled baskets would 
hardly have been overlooked in another. 

How soon a last resort becomes a recog- 
nized necessity, and even the most trying in- 
convenience transforms itself into a not un- 
pleasing part of our daily life ! The drying up 
of wells and ** never-failing " springs is already 
a nine days* wonder, and who looks for more 
than a constant trickle from the barrel of water 
beside the door? 

Daily the rude " stone-boat,'' with its 
clumsy yoked oxen, slips on its winding 
track through the crisp mown fields ; daily the 
clear brook-water is dipped from rocky pools 
and sunny shallows, and its bubbling laughter 
imprisoned in a black and soundless cistern. 



A FA RMER' S DA UGH TER, 103 

But that I may better realize the potent charm 
of common things, let me stand in the open 
door-way and h'sten to the chatter and Hsp of 
childish voices, — voices of the brown-haired 
gypsy girl and the bonny boy with shining 
hazel eyes. There sit the two with an arm 
around each other, and broad hats falling back- 
ward from merry sunburnt faces, steadying 
themselves by a hand on the bumping barrel 
that gurgles and rolls behind them, while now 
and again a sudden lurch sends them off in 
shrieks of laughter. And at their side walks 
the fond papa, who turns from guiding 
his steers to look with partial eyes and smile 
upon that pretty pair ! 

J[ugtt${ ^irt$i^tt% 

Broad lights and shadows sweep below . 

The sun-girt mountains* nearer range ; 
The woods their dusk, bright masses show 

Along the line of subtlest change. 

The meadows, greening goldenly, 

Clothe their broad slopes in satin sheen ; 

With leaf-lit boughs against the sky, 
The glancing tree-tops laugh between. 



I04 JOURNAL OF 

To such a house, so roofed by heaven, 
So walled with earth, a stately pile, 

What flower-wrought tapestries are given. 
What wreathed arches, mile on mile ! 

The aster laughs amid the woods. 
Heaps up her fringes in the sun, 

And light along the dusty roads 
Thistles and daisies mingling run. 

The fences all are ringed with flame, 
That aye ascends in yellow spires, 

And in the shade the foxglove stands 
And feeds afresh the forest fires. 



Within four walls whose tints are dead 

Beside this outer world of ours. 
The blank, cold ceiling overhead, 

There glows a vase of fresh-plucked flowers : 

The white wood-aster's spangled train. 
The everlasting's gold-tipped pearls, 

Pale clovers from the wind-swept lane. 
And milk-weed with its hooded curls ! 

Had any other dared to try. 

How cold, how crude the hues combined ; 
They owned beneath their native sky 

An eye so true, a touch so kind ! 

Let grassy uplands, forest-crowned, 
With purples deck the border-wild ; 

We in our chambered cell have found 
The whole creation reconciled. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 105 

Already the pictured calm of closing sum- 
mer is here ; and with the unclouded green of 
earth and blue of heaven, the oat-harvest 
brims again with molten gold the happy val- 
leys, 

" Widening and widening, till they fade 
In yon soft ring of summer haze." 

The slumbrous August noons are full of 
color and rnovement, when the rhythmic flow 
of the wind is hushed by the measured sweep 
of cradles, and the uncut grain on the uplands 
falls evenly in soft, bright waves athwart the 
sunny field. Reclining on its borders, we fol- 
low at our ease the rapid, graceful motions of 
raking and binding; for pleasant and pictur- 
esque it is to see a tall lad grasp his armful 
and deftly twist the shining strands with 
wonted ease and freedom. And when at last 
the pure golden sheaves stand upright against 
the reddish bronze of the stubble, then lean- 
ing breathlessly against the massy pile, or 



lof) JOURNAL OF 

nestling underneath its warm and quivering 
shadow, how exquisite the sensation that 
steals under the closed eyelids and over the 
flushed temples, till the very finger-tips and 
ends of the hair begin to burn and creep ! 

But too soon we are roused from our sun- 
steeped couch by the panting of the ox-team, 
the creaking of the wain, and the noisy urging 
of the men. Each sheaf is tossed through 
the air with a wonderful lightness, and laid 
straightly and smoothly down to make the 
square and handsomely compacted load that 
moves slow and stately up the warm brown 
slope. Such is the complete and varied group- 
ing of this harvest picture, set in the purest of 
pure color, and more perfectly harmonized 
throughout than was even the waving rye-field 
a month ago. And yet the whole is not more 
beautiful than is each separate bundle of yel- 
low straw, whose unstudied elegance of form 
is carelessly crowned with a rich burst of grain, 
naturally falling into ripe and delicate clusters. 

There are men afield, of course, men whose 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 107 

rough gestures and obvious play of form or 
feature add greatly to the attraction of the 
scene ; there is one man — the master — of 
graver and keener air ; there is pretty by-play 
of bright-faced children, hiding behind the 
stooks and clambering over the loads ; and 
even for ourselves, who are only here as spec- 
tators, we cannot hinder our part in the play. 
But night comes on apace ; the faint tinkle 
of cow-bells is heard in the hollow ; the cattle 
are released from the yoke and left to graze 
by the roadside ; and sitting in a silent, shad- 
owy group on the cold door-stone we listen 
to subdued snatches of rude, familiar song, 

" Where the home-bound harvesters 
Hunt the windfalls in the dew." 

As I take up my papers for to-day's entry, 
my eye falls on the last line of the last page 
written, and suddenly it reminds me of the 
*' harvest apples " that light the orchard with 
amber and red, and fill the lap of earth with 



I08 JOURNAL OF 

plenty. Earliest and best of the fall fruitage 
they seem when tasted under the tree, or out 
in the harvest fields, or carried by pocketfuls 
on wild-wood rambles. Or still more rich and 
satisfying are the largest and sweetest among 
them when baked and eaten with delicious 
milk and bread at tea-time. 

Yesterday we all went out after breakfast 
and picked up a basketful — enough for a week 
of excellent pies and puddings — while the 
children spilled as many more from their over- 
flowing aprons, and our two-year-old boy 
toddled after them with one in each chubby 
fist. To-day I lay and munched on the grass 
for an hour, and fell asleep at last ; and to- 
morrow, as if by contrast, some fortunate one 
will discover a seedling tree, with half a score 
of hard, round apples, whose flavor is yet racy 
and peculiar enough to afford a new sensation. 

Nor is this all ; for the year is now in its 
perfect prime, the hedges are black with 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 109 

heavy drooped clusters of sultry-looking elder- 
berries, and higher up the piquant wild-cherry 
shakes out its glistening bunches. On warm 
and grassy slopes the boughs are loaded down 
with freckled early pears of sprightly, pleasant 
flavor, and golden Bartletts, with a melting 
flush on the cheek that is turned toward the 
sun. Then there are velvety peaches, aglow 
with tender color; and purple and ruddy 
bunches of out-door grapes ; and luscious blue 
and amber plums, with an almost impalpable 
bloom upon them. There are dark-green 
water-melons, cool and refreshing ; and musk- 
melons, tawny and rich ; dusky yellow quinces, 
and rosy, sour little crab-apples. 

In the full and free acceptance of these au- 
tumnal gifts we come to feel a just indig- 
nation against the many who spoil the edge of 
their enjoyment by a barbarous haste. Truly 
he is no lover of fruit who fails to observe a 
perfect correspondence between the delicious, 
fragrant strawberries of June and its rosy blos- 
soming ; the subtle heats and the white and 



no JOURNAL OF 

scarlet currants of July, frail, transparent 
globes on glistening strings ; the hot, sweet, 
shining blackberries of August and its sultry 
dead-ripeness ; the frost-touched grapes and 
the golden lights of September. Yet pale, 
tasteless strawberries in April and half-ripened 
peaches in July have vulgarized the taste of so 
many that their jaded palates are no longer 
capable of a fresh sensation. Ah ! well it is 
that Mother Earth gives never grudgingly, 
and we find no stint in the bounty of wood 
and field, where all may take their fill, and 
every want be healthfully supplied. 

While the children are flying in two or three 
times a day with blackberries from the road- 
sides and tomatoes from the garden ; while 
great baskets of delicious green-gages, home- 
grown peaches and pears, tender young sweet- 
corn and pyramidal cauliflower are piled on 
shelves and tables, more than one willing pair 
of hands must needs be occupied in the work 
of preservation. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, III 

It is easy putting up a few strawberries, or 
a pail of fresh-picked, wild red raspberries, 
of a coolish summer evening ; and many a 
rosy jar of dainty sweetmeats have I sealed 
between early tea and early candle-light in 
June» But now long mornings and long un- 
broken afternoons are spent in the patient 
work of preparation, wiping, trimming and 
cutting the fruit. The little ones make a 
frolic of it at first, and many hands make light 
work, but one by one these volunteer aids slip 
quietly away, and the zealous few proceed 
with the real business of the hour. 

Perhaps a score of plates are spread with 
blackberries, slightly stewed and sweetened, 
then set in a cool oven to dry; or glass jars 
full of steaming fruit and syrup are plunged in 
cold water and brought slowly to a boil ; or 
gushing red and amber jellies and rich pre- 
serve of odorous quinces, citron-yellow, tempt 
the eye with transparent gem-like hues. 

Then, in the intervals of preserving, an^ 
other picks her tiny cucumbers and tender 



112 JOURNAL OF 

martynias, chops her green tomatoes and boils 
her delicately spiced vinegar ! 

Even half-pint glasses may now be had with 
tops securely screwed, — and this is a con- 
venience, of course; yet the old-fashioned 
rounds of white paper, plainly written over, 
and tied or gummed on, give a neat finish to 
the corner cupboard, as well as to the dusky 
red and blue jars on the pantry shelves. 



SEPTEMBER. 

Idler and vagabond, braggart tree, 
Whose cap is brave with a jaunty feather, 
And scarlet tassel and cord together. 
In the face of the yellow September weather 

To flaunt your meaningless gayety ! 

Out, out, I say, with your gypsy looks ; 

Let trumpery frolic and tinsel be ! 

What ! shaking your head with a mocking glee ? 

Little you reck of the world or me, 
You vagrant lover of woods and brooks ! 

Not a vain caprice ? And are such as I 
To be checked by a warning finger — pooh ! 
A fig for the frost, and we'll call it true, 
I can be reckless, as well as you, 

Fie, little tell-tale, fie, fie, fie ! 

Not unlike these, perhaps, are the words 
that spring to our lips at sight of the first red 

113 



114 JOURNAL OF 

tree, which, no matter when or where it shows 
itself, is always a surprise. 

The birches are begirlning to take on a faint 
tinge of straw-color ; the hemlocks to darken 
perceptibly against a background of mellower 
greens ; the stems and lower leaves of the 
raspberry briers glow as in secret with wonder- 
ful blues and reds, when some rash and pre- 
sumptuous maple flings out a pennant of flame 
across the way, like a sudden and startling 
challenge to the passer-by. 

It is impossible to help looking at it. We 
turn away our eyes again and again, but there 
it is before us ; and our only refuge is in that 
wildest of all merriment which exists in the 
very face of coming danger. The first bell- 
gentian uncloses by the roadside, or rather, 
will not unclose ; for under those shut lids 
there lies a mystery deeper than is even in the 
shy sister-glance of the fringed gentian. The 
asters lavish their purple and blue on wild wet 
banks and narrow lanes ; the golden-rod runs 
riot over the fields, and the blackest of black 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 115 

huckleberries are still to be tasted on windy 
hill-tops ranged about with stunted trees. 
Then let us laugh while we may, with flowers 
for our adorning, birds and squirrels for boon 
companions, a wise extravagance in all things, 
and ^* wild applause for the wildest folly ! '* 

"Fling wide the generous grain, — we fling 
On the dark mould the green of spring ! " 

Bryant. 

An autumn sowing seems at first sight a 
little confusing, but the analogies are very close 
between the outward workings of Nature and 
the lessons of skilled labor. Does not the 
humblest wayside weed scatter its winged seed 
as soon as it is brought to maturity ? And are 
not the tree-germs forming in hidden leaf-buds 
and flower-stems? 

The '' grateful ground ** responds with fervor 
to this late bestowal, and upland curves are 
tinged with brightening green ; or, later still, 
there appears no surface hue till the fields are 
naked and white with frost. 



ii6 JOURNAL OF 

'* Hark ! from the murmuring clods I hear 
Glad voices of the coming year ! " 

How rich in suggestiveness is this ** Song of 
the Sower/* and how its steady, rhythmic beat 
makes music in my thought ! The song and 
shout of coming harvesters, the deep hum of 
the mill-wheel, the clatter of the flail, mingle 
with the ** free and joyous sweep '' of the arm 
that strews the seed upon the expectant soil. 

And again, with what hope and confidence 
we say: 

** The tempest now may smite, the sleet 
All night on the drowned furrow beat, 
And winds, that from the cloudy hold 
Of winter breathe the bitter cold. 
Stiffen to stone the mellow mould, — 
Yet safe shall lie the wheat ; 
Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, 

Shall walk again the genial year, 
To wake with warmth and nurse with dew 

The germs we lay to slumber here I " 

Let it never be said that the lover of beauty 
is no utilitarian, or that the bright-faced farm- 



A I^AKMER'S DAUGHTER, 117 

er*s daughter is not as truly a child of the soil 
as are his brown and rugged boys. She laughs 
at sun and wind, at autumn heat and wintry 
chill, and gaily mounts the toppling hay-wagon 
or jolts peaceably over the stones in the empty 
cart, that she may see and mingle with it all. 

If lines of equal sweep and symmetry ally 
themselves in her thought to the scenes and 
actions of every day, their outward seeming is 
surely based on the elemental plan. And 
while she is quick to feel the poetry of earth, 
which lightens plain and common things, she 
has no less thoroughly identified herself with 
the world^s work, and made herself familiar 
with many of its best results. 

To-day they are digging potatoes in the 
'' corner lot ; " and leaning over the old stone 
wall, I watch the jerky, almost automatic mo- 
tion, and hear the clatter and scrape of hoes, 
while the heaps of pretty white ovals are grow- 
ing fast. I could stand all day, I know, with 
only that ringing rhyme of labor in my ears, 
but after a while I step down between the hills, 



it8 journal of 

and join in the steady buzz of various expecta- 
tion. 

The land-owner and potato-grower is there, 
now catching up a hoe and working with sud- 
den eagerness, now watching with ill-concealed 
anxiety the success of some careful experiment 
in seed or fertilizers. The men, too, are there, 
hazarding their jests and rough conjectures, 
or displaying a refreshing ignorance in view 
of this extraordinary weight or that sur- 
prising yield. A pair of boots, I believe, 
is a standing offer for the largest single 
tuber, and as much *^ the regular thing" as a 
paper of tobacco in the coal-bush for a four- 
foot stick of coal ; but here they soon get 
into the spirit of the thing, and work harder 
for that than for the prize. 

Sometimes, too, a man goes by with dog and 
gun, and several lean on their hoes with a 
cheerful '* hullo ! '* Or a neighbor pulls up at 
the turn and displays a deal of well-meaning 
curiosity, telling long stories, most of which I 
should not like to vouch for. But such is life, 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 119 

and we may not care to own liow important 
to us are the ^* I tell you's '* and the *^you 
don't say so*s *' of the outside world. 

A raw, chilly day, with an easterly wind and 
threatening masses of cloud ; a damp, dense 
fog, blotting out the landscape and saturating 
the air with moisture ; a long, cold rain, beat- 
ing down the flowers in the garden walks, and 
leaving dripping wet the grass and leaves, — 
such are the unwelcome signs and changes of 
early fall. 

A hasty glance from my window on first 
awakening shows the drenched sweet faces of 
the morning-glories upturned to mine, and a 
flock of half-grown turkeys are huddled to- 
gether in a corner, shivering and crying with 
wind and wet. But a cheerful blaze in the 
open fireplace and a savory, smoking breakfast 
enliven the down-stairs rooms, and while lei- 
surely sipping my cup of coffee my thoughts 
are busy with no sad forebodings, but with 



I20 JOURNAL OF 

growing plans and timely suggestions for the 
wet and windy mornings of autumn. 

The first touch of coziness and comfort is in 
the open wood fires — the dancing light, the 
crackling flames, and, above all, the enticing 
warmth. Then, if possible, should there be 
some unwonted touches of color in dress and 
upholstery, points of scarlet and blue that 
fasten the eye. And the concoction of dainty 
dishes, skilfully combined, is an art not at all to 
be despised, since the growing coolness has 
given a new and keen relish for well-prepared 
food. After a day made tolerable by such 
good cheer, the evening lamp is early lighted, 
and, as the evenings lengthen, the books, the 
games, the conversations of winter nights are 
well begun. True, there are weeks of perfect 
dreamy weather yet to come, when the near 
approach of winter will seem like a myth in 
the still sunshine; but to-night, as I search 
with one long look the rainy darkness, I 
feel its presence near me with a haunting 
chill. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 121 

Once more the illimitable days are woven of 
haze and sunshine, and on the long bright 
wolds the buckwheat fields are turning brown, 
— brown streaked with olive and tinged with 
red, like the colors of health on a sunburnt 
cheek. There are dull, dusky reds and tawny 
golds in the strips of woodland that island the 
plain ; the woodbine flings out a scarlet 
creeper from its background of rich maroon, 
and the ivory walnut slips its outer covering 
of dingy green, while the chestnuts in their 
satin-lined bed are already of a delicate fawn- 
color. 

Along the winding wood-paths, too, there 
are wonderful bits of color, — red-veined and 
black-tipped whorls on the slender cucumber- 
root, white and pale-green and straw-tinged 
ferns, blackberry vines and milk-weed pods 
with satin-winged seeds, russet oak leaves and 
pale-blue berries of dogwood on reddish stems. 

But, on the whole, there is nothing richer 



122 JOURNAL OF 

and more splendid than the acres of ripe buck- 
wheat that the men are cradling as it falls in 
thick brown bunches of tiny, triangular, glossy 
seeds. Or when it stands in crumpled heaps 
about the field, and, treading under foot the 
dry, harsh stubble, whose dull greenish hue 
shall yet be heightened and deepened to a 
" fine wine of color,*' with one arm thrown 
about the neighboring stack, we inhale the cu- 
rious pungent odor, and taste the sweet pow- 
dery kernel that parts so readily from the hull, 
and hearken to the insect murmurs, and the 
intervals of sound from a wandering cow-bell, 
and now and again some unfamiliar bird-cry, — 
then, if ever, do we know that we live, and not 
by bread alone. 

"Corn and pumpkins '* is one of the tradi- 
tional crops of New England, and I feel 
aggrieved whenever I see the one without the 
other. It is an insult to the memory of our 
fathers and of the olden time. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 1 23 

In the fields about us now the corn is al- 
ready shocked, and its dun stalks and maize- 
colored tops, with ** the pumpkin's yellow 
chrome across weedy acres,'' make an autumn 
picture to match the reaped buckwheat field, 
'' in brown and scarlet set ! " 

Later come on the huskings, which are often 
held in the field as late as Indian Summer, 
the heaps of yellow ears lying out in the thin 
blue atmosphere, and warming through the 
mellow haze. In the great barns there is oc- 
casionally a rough pretence at a ^' husking- 
bee/' — what a pity that such a gay, hearty cus- 
tom^ 

** When jests went round, and laughs that made 
The house-dog answer with his howl, 
And kept astir the barn-yard fowl,'* 

should ever have fallen into disuse ! 

Is not this, too, a fit time to speak of those 
ancient dainties, hasty-pudding and pumpkin 
pie ? Joel Barlow, the Revolutionary poet, 
has smoothed the way to the former, and is it 
not melancholy that Indian cakes and corn 



124 JOURNAL OF 

muffins have found favor in many households, 
till the making of an old-fashioned hasty-pud- 
ding has come to be a lost art ? None the less 
has the jovial squash usurped the place of the 
pumpkin, and although I always eat the mod- 
ern substitute under the good old name, I find 
something of delicacy and savor in a well- 
prepared pumpkin pie, which the squash, with 
its superior richness and color, can never hope 
to equal. 

When first a chill of gray foreboding strikes 
through the brief fall twilights, and the unmis- 
takable touch of frost is in the evening air, 
then first do we withdraw ourselves from the 
sweet company of the outside world, and 
hasten away from the shivering forms without, 
to draw closer the chairs wuthin. 

Two or three times already has some one 
warned us of impending disaster, and running 
out with an armful of shawls, we have cov- 
ered lightly our summer favorites, while the 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 125 

Plotted house-plants looked green and thriving 
i'/n the warm and sheltered windows. But to- 
/ night we know it is no false alarm that sends 
us out for a farewell look, and with mingled 
pain and pleasure we break off great bunches 
of heliotrope and geranium, and strip the 
melon and tomato vines of their lingering 
store. These latest treasures gradually enrich 
the deserted rooms, and smoulder in purple 
and red through the strange lonely mingling 
of twilight and firelight. 

And when half an hour later we shut our- 
selves in, with books and talk, from all remem- 
brance and regret, we know that for six long 
months we must be all in all to ourselves and 
to each other, and make a gentle warmth 
about us, like the rabbit or the squirrel in his 
winter nest. 

We know that the earliest peep of day will 
show a waste of whiteness, with the light crys- 
talline touch of the hoar-frost on every blade 
and spear of grass. And later, when the coax- 
ing fall sunlight hovers about the south garden- 



126 JOURNAL OF 

wall, the tender morning-glories will hang limp 
and blackened, the scarlet and blue salvias 
will shrink as under a blight, and some dropped 
cluster of forgotten fruit will turn a rosy frost- 
bitten cheek to the sun. 

But no sooner do we look for these un- 
checked early frosts, and realize the danger to 
our more delicate field-flowers and tender gar- 
den-blossoms, than the wisest among us sally 
forth and weave from lanes and by-ways an 
autumnal crown. On the face of a steep and 
shelving rock with a southerly exposure, where 
jagged hemlocks gain but scanty foothold, and 
beech and maple embower the grassy slope be- 
yond, the frost grape clasps its interlacing fin- 
gers, and hangs rich bunches from the trellised 
bank. Clambering over the wayside steep for 
the rare spoil of purpling clusters, and loosen- 
ing by hand or foot the wandering vines, we 
unbind at last a garland of sylvan wildness, 
and taste its subtle fragrance, its exquisite 
bloom and hue. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 127 

Again we walk or drive along an old stone 
wall which has sunk in places into a heap of 
lichened ruins, with a low red house beside 
it that has fallen into disuse, and a mul- 
leined pasture studded with mossy apple-trees. 
There would we disengage the tangled vines 
of bittersweet, with their waxy yellow berries 
which open and display the seeds enclosed in 
a scarlet pulpy aril. 

Or wandering by the brookside and in 
among the alders, and plunging waist-deep in 
thistles and golden-rod, we push through a 
very thicket of virgin's-bower, whose tender 
greenish masses uncurl when broken, and form 
soft smoky clusters in the warmth of the 
house. 

Then, too, we pluck the golden-rod itself, 
the tallest and finest stems of all, and for 
months it keeps its velvety bloom and color of 
old gold. With it come delicate filmy stars of 
Michaelmas daisies, and great bunches of pearly 
everlastings, and even rare fringed gentians, so 
perfectly pressed as to hold their divine sweet 



128 JOURNAL OF 

blue. Nor will it do to forget the dainty- 
sheaf of wild grasses now hanging in a dark 
corner of the store-room, nor the white downy 
thistle-balls pinned up in another, nor the at- 
las filled with beautiful ferns, nor fifty other 
lovely things brought in by one or another and 
held in readiness for Christmas decorations. 

Friend, good-by ; the spoken word 
On thy dulled ear falls unheard ; 
These I take, and hold them fast, 
These pale tokens are thy last. 
Nay, the fleeting chill that slips 
From thine icy finger-tips, 
And thy fixed and glassy eye 
Bid good by. 

Welcome, friend ; the greeting said 
Brings a message from the dead ; 
In my outstretched hand there lie 
Vanished hopes and tears run dry ; 
Since thy touch and blighting breath 
Pass unharmed my charmed wreath, 
Gifts another gave to me 
I give thee ! 

Summer goes with noiseless tread,— 
Summer is the beauteous dead ; 
Kisses cold in blackened bowers 
Are her gifts of fruit and flowers. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 129 

Winter comes, shod soft with snow. 
On his cheek a frosty glow, 
In his locked embrace doth last 
All that's past. 

Great over-laden bunches of brown seeds 
with red-poll linnets feeding in flocks upon 
them ; scarlet haws mixed with brown leaflets 
and slender thorns, and wild-rose hips as fresh 
and hardy; solitary blue-black berries, frost- 
touched, but all the sweeter for it, — such is the 
birds' harvest these short autumnal days. 

Not as the wicked black crows, who rob the 
grain-fields of yellow dropped kernels, nor as 
the insolent blue jays, who steal from the very 
corn-crib, but like those other humbler pen- 
sioners, I accept the fruits of no visible labor. 
Mine are the mingling daisies in the meadow 
grass, mine the black-eyed gypsies that riot 
among the nodding grain ; all that breaks loose 
or runs wild, all that climbs over the wall and 
creeps along the border of cultivation, is mine 
beyond dispute. 



130 JOURNAL OF 

I follow and glean in the harvest-fields of 
honorable toil ; but the weedy, wild luxuriance 
of tangled fence-rows is under my sickle and 
bound in my sheaves. 

Mine, too, are the frosty airs and lights of 
autumn, the deep blue sky, the gold of the 
grain, the green-tinged russet of the crisp short 
grass. For no farmer need suppose that his 
work is to conquer and subdue the land, or 
even to possess it ; he is the master-servant, 
obedient to command, and receiving again the 
measure of his capacity. He earns his bread 
by the sweat of his brow, while another receives 
the wages of time and of eternity. 

Perhaps the birds' harvest may be the richer 
after all ! 

The county fair, with its all of cheerful, 
wholesome interest and legitimate reward, is 
with us the farmer's yearly holiday and merry- 
m.aking. 

Gathering together, as it does, the rural 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 131 

population for miles around, it takes on the 
added importance of a social occasion, and af- 
fords to the many a safe resort for harmless 
. gossip and pleasant chat, to the few a free in- 
terchange of ideas and remaking of opinions. 
But this is only an aside from more substantial 
gains, — the fostering of an honest pride, a gen- 
erous rivalry, and the schooling of the modern 
progressive farmer to better methods and larger 
results. 

Our fair is held during three days in the last 
week of September, and each one of the three 
lays separate claim to value and attractiveness. 
The first is perhaps the best, for on that day 
the people are mostly in dead earnest. In the 
morning the several exhibits are arranged, and 
one is really better repaid by watching these 
unfinished labors of care and painstaking, 
than by any after examination, however syste- 
matic and thorough. The afternoon is largely 
devoted to '' cattle-show," the best part of the 
whole for lovers of fine animals. The exhi* 
bition of stock is usually a good one, and the 



132 JOURNAL OF 

veriest know-nothing may admire the dainty 
thoroughbred heifers and magnificent bulls, 
whilst good judges discuss ^^ points" and com- 
pare pedigrees. Nobody remembers a year 
when it did not rain in fair-time, and it may 
be that a mild, steady drizzle on the first day, 
minded little by ''old stagers " or muddy en- 
thusiasts, interferes least with the business or 
pleasure of the hour. 

The second day is the family turn-out, on 
which the wife and children are expected to 
have a good time and to see all there is to be 
seen. The exhibits in the hall are swept 
around in imposing array, and with music and 
merry-go-rounds is made manifest an air of 
festivity as short-lived as are the red balloons 
that are borne along by the crowd. 

The third day closes with exercises in the 
hall and the general distribution of spoons. 
Nobody pretends to sit it all out, I believe, but 
for an hour conveniently short, one can do 
nothing better than to listen while the roll is 
called, and note the shrewd comments, silent 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 1 33 

or otherwise, on the several awards. The gray- 
beards on the platform, the little knot of re- 
porters whispering and chuckling in the gallery, 
the restless and varied audiences, the loud 
monotonous tones and gruff responses, — all 
help to relieve the dulness of a long and 
tedious session. 

As the dinner-hour approaches, all sorts of 
expedients are tried. Some go home ; some 
munch uncomfortably on the grass ; some hast- 
ily gulp down ham and gingerbread, leading 
sticky-fingered children with pop-corn balls ; 
some repair to their carriages with bread and 
grapes, and the rough and ill-served eating- 
houses are filled to overflowing. Why not 
have rude tables and benches for picnicers set 
out under the trees, w^here a generous home 
lunch may be eaten with comfort ; good hot 
dishes served at clean and roomy tables ; and 
better still, a capital dinner, with all good 
cheer, gotten up behind the scenes by and for 
members only, or some few choice spirits 
among them ? 



134 JOURNAL OF 

But while an intelligent interest may go the 
rounds, from mammoth pumpkins to floral 
wonders, from farm wagons and implements to 
patchwork quilts, from snowy bread and biscuit 
to indifferent art, — the universal study of char- 
acter is best worth while. There are types 
here of every degree of markedness ; the grub- 
bing, hard-featured farmer and the amateurish 
young dairyman elbow each other in the crowd ; 
the round-eyed, red-cheeked country lass and 
the loud-mannered, overdressed village girl are 
jostled together ; here is a comely, prosperous 
matron, and there a gaunt spinster with the 
worn sharpness, the aggressive ignorance of 
lone New England women. 

Yet with all there is a growing fund of 
patience and good-humor which, more than all 
else, it may be, makes the county fair and 
"• cattle-show '' emphatically '' a good thing." 



OCTOBER. 

" And only thro' the faded leaf 
The chestnut pattering to the ground. " 

Tennyson. 

NOW comes the festival of the squirrels, 
careful and provident with all their 
reckless jollity ; of the children, brown and 
lithe as they, who whirl in elfin dance through 
the yellowing leaves, and of all emboldened 
by lucky chance or life-long familiarity to 
make good their claim with children and squir- 
rels. 

A fortnight ago there were some to beat 
down the unopened burrs, and with skilful fin- 
gers search out the hidden treasure ; but now 
the ripe, perfect nuts are dropping rustlingly 

135 



136 JOURNAL OF 

and a slight jarring of the tree-trunks with a 
large flat stone brings down a prickly rain. 
The chipmunk whisks behind the old rail fence, 
shrilling a note of mingled fear and defiance, 
as we draw forth from some warm hollow hand- 
fuls two or three of his secret hoard. Brown 
and polished, and streaked with darker hue, 
glossy and smooth as satin, and tufted with 
silk, we gather them up by twos and threes 
from crevices in the wall, from the nestling 
leaves and crumbling sod. 

Nothing, indeed, could be fuller of fun than 
the nutting party, unless — and here we have 
the crowning jollity of autumn — unless it be 
the same party drawn up around a blazing fire 
at evening, with apples and popcorn and a 
*^ chestnut boil ! " Golden gleaming lights and 
frost-touched leaves, filmy rings of asters, 
faintly purple-tinged, make one picture; glori- 
ous warmth and laughter, curling lips and 
dancing eyes, the other! So do we gather 
with light festivity in the wood and about the 
hearth. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 137 



©qioi«J| t^XiX^, 



Out in the wood, in the open glade, 

In the crimson autumn weather, 
There are gypsy faces laugh out from the shade. 

And dark -wreathed locks in the sinking sun, 
And all together they romp and run, 
The dark and the fair together, — 
Where the gold with the brown month interweaves 
They come, — the harvesters of leaves ! 

The leaves are ripe for the kiss of frost, 
And the lamp burns blue overhead ; 

The beech and chestnut are yellow as wheat, 
The maple and oak blood-red. 
A touch, and the joining of stems is lost, 

And with clutching fingers and hurrying feet. 
They are raking and binding their scattered sheaves,- 
The happy harvesters of leaves. 

What weary worker was ever found 

In a light fantastic whirl, 
Where over the red-strewn, leaf-thick ground 
His hard- won harvest was straightway bound 

At the hands of a blue-eyed girl ? 
No after-weariness undeceives 
The idling harvester of leaves. 

For streaked and pied and russet and red 

The wild-wood carpet is softly piled, 
And the wood-path echoes the rustling tread 

Of each slow-footed child ; 
All empty-handed, and winding back, 
Lagging of limb, on their homeward track. 
They drop forgotten their red-gold sheaves,-— 
They are only harvesters of leaves. 



138 JOURNAL CF 



The fringed gentian to the sky 

Her pure face turneth tenderly, 
And golden all the woodlands lie, — 

The chestnuts dropping rustlingly, 
And from the hawthorn's crimsoned bough 

The pheasant's brood whirrs joyously ! 

D. H. R. G. 



The distant report of a gun is a somewhat 
barbarous and unaccustomed sound to startle 
the echoes on long and lonely walks, where, in 
the intervals of silence, '' a dozen pairs of 
strong wrings thrill like thunder through the 
arches of the wood.'* 

Yet a stray handful of practised sportsmen 
take a chance bout now and then at woodcock 
and quail, and more often a '' good shot " 
among the colliers and farm hands goes off 
with a rusty firelock, and a mongrel cur at his 
heels, to pick off a couple of wild pigeons 
feedmg upon the buckwheat stubble. The 
partridge, however, is the bird most sought for 
by our huntsmen and woodsmen, while country 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 139 

boys set their snares for the pretty, unsuspect- 
ing creatures, and bring them in with the soft 
bronzed plumage ruffled, the bright eyes 
glazed, and the long neck hanging limp and 
cold, to the wonder and dismay of the chil- 
dren. 

This is one way of looking at it, but from 
another point of view, this snaring is a very 
pretty business. One learns the habits of 
these timid forest denizens more quickly and 
naturally, perhaps, than in any other way. 
The bended sapling, the notched and pointed 
twigs, the nicely adjusted string with its 
dainty slip-noose, the tempting apple-bait, — 
what a harmless-looking arrangement on the 
dry and fallen leaves ! Yet not only the birds, 
but the rabbits, their second cousins, fall a 
helpless prey. 

Later in the season, the hardy, snow-loving 
partridge, ** whose wings seem to rustle with 
more fervency in mid-winter," is picked off 
in the very act of '^ budding " on a rugged old 
apple-tree or yellow birch. And across the 



I40 JOURNAL OF 

down-trodden path of the white hare, in the 
deepest recesses of the mountains, that treach- 
erous noose is suspended, while only a passing 
glance is given to bird and mouse and squirrel 
tracks, or the larger print of fox and wild cat 
in the light fresh snow. 

My dear Cipher : 

You never can guess to what an escapade 
your dignified friends consented on a late au- 
spicious occasion, — the party numbering Mr. 
and Mrs. Zero, Mr. and Mrs. Nought, and the 
Misses Ditto. Fancy, if you can, the graceful 
and self-possessed Mrs. Nought, looking taller 
and paler than ever in her plain black, seated 
on the topmost round of a ladder, and 
filling her half-bushel basket with deft, 
quick fingers! Fancy Mr. Zero's convenient 
length in the fork of a particularly inaccessible 
tree, and pelted with apples by a couple of | 

mad-cap girls ! \ 

But there ! — in the first place, you city peo- . 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 141 

pie can never be made to understand that 
what is fun to you is death to us. One can- 
not be forever looking on ; and after ^' eyes 
with gazing fed " on the streaked and splendid 
piles of home-grown apples — those hardy, 
genial products of harsh New England soil — a 
day of fruitful toil is glowing with positive en- 
joyment, and gives to country life its fullest 
zest. 

The skies were fair on that memorable 
morning, the weather propitious, and the scene 
of our labors an unusually attractive one. 
But picture to yourself an irregularly beautiful 
orchard, with rugged tree-forms in massive 
combination, and rows of trees in laden curves, 
whose lower branches swept the ground. The 
horses were tethered on a grassy knoll hard 
by, and behind a green-bronze screen of leaves 
great baskets were emptied and replenished, 
while the crimson and wood-color and blue of 
the ladies' dresses suggested the gay plumage 
of some tropical birds. 

Unflagging was the energy displayed by the 



142 JOURNAL OF 

sparkling and courageous Mrs. Zero, whose 
basket swung from a loaded branch and was 
managed with skill by a coil of rope. Many 
were the harum-scarum feats performed by the 
gentlemen, such as swinging by one hand and 
dropping from limb to limb, or climbing a lad- 
der supported by strong arms and resting 
upon air. The younger of the two girls, a 
romp of fourteen, showed a rare combination 
of dash and daring with the freshest wit, and 
her gentlemen friends had much ado to defend 
themselves against her gay challenging laugh- 
ter and pin-points of sarcasm. 

A rich and varied luncheon was spread upon 
the grass, the farmer's wife contributed a cup 
of hot tea, and white bread and brown, canned 
meats, tomato soup, and such like substantial 
dainties were spiced with talk and banter and 
repartee. You remember your old friend 
Nought, who invariably mended his timeworn 
jokes with fresh and timely merriment, — and 
such jokes, you will readily see, could not 
bear writing down. Then we freely discussed 



I 



A FA RMER' S DA UGIl TER. 1 43 

the ladies' exploits, and between jest and 
earnest defended woman's claim to a larger 
field of usefulness. 

But before the sun got low the hampers 
were repacked, the apples left basking on 
the grass to await the arrival of the farm 
wagon, and — and — good-bye, dear! and be- 
lieve me 

Truly yours, 

And So Forth. 

A RETURN to the primitive forms of cider- 
making would doubtless be considered a step 
backward in methods of use. Yet we were all 
charmed with what we saw of them in one of 
the rural districts a short time ago, — the 
straw-laid press, the wooden screw and lever 
turned by horse-power, the pleasant processes 
all openly carried on in the sunny, crisp Oc- 
tober air. A halt opposite the ring, a word 
with the men, and a cool, pleasant draught of 
the amber liquid — pure, unfermented apple- 



144 JOURNAL OF 

juice — was freely accorded to us as to the 
privileged few. 

No treat was ever more eagerly welcomed 
by country children than an invitation to help 
pick up the windfalls and half-wild apples and 
take them to the cider-mill. What jolting 
over the narrow mountain-roads into steep, 
rocky pastures and ** side-hill lots ; '* what 
climbing half-way up the rough, gnarled 
branches, and sending down a shower of rosy, 
hard little apples that danced away down the 
brook slope and hid themselves in the brown, 
slippery grass ! Witness these verses written 
years and years ago, and beginning 

The apple wild, I feel its charm, 

then going on with 

Its sisters in the orchard shade 

Are large and luscious, sweet and mellow, 
Their rosy blushes mingling laid 

On riper tints of tender yellow : 
Its wilful little knotty cheek 

Is painted with a crimson stain ; 
It stirs the grass beneath your feet, 

Warm with warm suns, and wet with rain ! 



A FA RMER' S DA UGH TER, 145 

And so through half a score of differing 
stanzas, till 

Born with the May, in rosy bloom, 
It falls upon October's bier. 

I have a fondness for sweet cider, and an 
honest liking for even the very hardest, in the 
stinging cold of mid-winter, so it be not flat 
and thin. Cider is (or should be) to the 
hardy, bold New Englander what the light 
wines of the Mediterranean slopes are to the 
Italian peasants, and why should not the 
grinding of the apples be as much an autumn 
festival as is the purple vintage ? Surely no 
splashing of blood-red grape-juice, or heaping 
of purple clusters, could be fairer in our eyes 
than the homely fashion of cider-making, and 
the '' yellow, russet, red '' of the daily aug- 
mented piles. 

Now that the old-time *' New England 
kitchen " is no longer a matter of pride, or 
even of curiosity, our thrifty housekeepers 



146 JOURNAL OF 

are making of theirs a mere mechanical con- 
trivance, and we are in danger of losing more 
than we think, with the hospitable doors, the 
roaring fire-places, and the generous *^ brick 
ovens." 

The kitchen need not now be the pleasant- 
est room in the house ; the dining-room is in 
part a modern substitute ; the library a new 
and rich possession ; the funereal parlors are 
bedecked and lightened, and the small, cold 
chambers made habitable. But I do protest 
against a glossing over of the simple and 
kindly offices of our common humanity, — and 
the farm-house kitchen should be, in some 
sense, the heart of the house. Do not shrink 
from the sound of your hammer-strokes, and 
let the nails show. 

Then nothing is better in its way than are 
the homely joys of fall and winter evenings 
before the kitchen fire. From pressing leaves 
to chopping mince-meat, these cheerful duties 
are many and widely different ; but to-night 
the cider is bottled ! A straw inserted in the 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 147 

bung-hole has served to test the degrees of 
fermentation, and now the critical moment 
has arrived, and the cider, taken at just the 
right stage of dainty piquancy, will sparkle 
and effervesce into the most delicious of 
home-made drinks. 

The green-globed bottles ranged in line, 
The plump corks simmering on the fire, — 

Well versed in every mystic sign, 

We clip the lengths of glittering wire, — 

while up the cellar stairs come the foaming 
pails of cider, two by two, and a raisin or two, 
a grain of rice, or a spoonful of sugar in each 
bottle, makes a lively combination with the 
clear, straw-colored liquor. 

Mother (calling). — Daugh-ter ! 

Daughter (faintly). — ^Yes ! 

Mother (at the foot of the garret stairs). — 
Where are you ? 

Daughter (from above). — Here ! 

Mother (toiling up the narrow, steep stair- 
way). — Aren*t you ever coming ? 



148 JOURNAL OF 

Daughter. — In a minute ! 

Mother (seating herself at the top, quite out 
of breath). — Well, my dear, what can you find 
to amuse you in this bare, cold garret hour 
after hour? Here I've •)'een searching for you 
high and low ! 

Daughter (struggling to her feet in' an absent- 
minded way). — Yes, mother, Fm so sorry ! 
What shall I do? 

Mother, — So youVe been looking over those 
old files of your uncle's papers? Those illus- 
trated weeklies published in war time would 
interest you, I know. 

Daughter (eagerly). — Yes, indeed ; and these 
magazines of forty or fifty years ago, with 
their queer, stilted comments on public affairs, 
their literary and political gossip, and absurd 
fashion-plates ! 

Mother, — That is true, and such reading is 
really valuable for its vivid presentation of past 
times and people. But speaking of fashion- 
plates, have you tried on any of grandma's 
antique finery? This was part of her wedding- 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER. 149 

gown ; and this bonnet, dear me ! I wore it 
myself when I was a girl ! I remember it as if 
it were only yesterday. 

Daughter. — It was a good idea of auntie's lO 
hang the bare, raftered wall with this ancient 
patchwork. It looks so comfortable and gay ! 
Then, with the strip of rag-carpet in the middle 
of the clean, stained floor, the broken spinning- 
wheel and three-legged table, piled with dingy, 
odd old books, and the cunning, three-cornered 
window, — it is perfect. 

Mother, — Yes ; I never knew a pleasanter 
garret than this ; it is spotlessly neat, and still 
it has the dear old rubbish and the ancient 
cobwebbed charm. 

Daughter. — And yet you said — 

Mother (hastily interrupting). — These bed- 
quilts, now ; your aunties and I pieced them as 
children. Each square has a story belonging 
to it. These books have our childish names 
scribbled all over the fly-leaf ; and here is great- 
grandfather's family Bible, with all the births, 
marriages and deaths down to the present gen- 



ISO JOURNAL OF 

eration. Your own name and birth-date, see, 
in grandma's feeble, trembling hand ! 

Daughter (after a pause). — -This queer little 
trunk in the corner, with its tarnished gilt 
leather and rusty hasps, — what is in it, do you 
know, mamma? 

Mother (brightening). — Why, those are our 
old family papers, — colonial grants and com- 
missions under King George, old wills, letters 
— some day you must study them all up. 
Your great-great-grandfather was a very re- 
markable man, my dear, of whom you may 
well be proud. 

Daughter (examining them carefully). — Look 
at the yellowed paper, the faded ink, the great 
red seals and almost illegible writing ! 

Mother (rising and laying a hand on the top 
of the stairway). — But there ! you have kept 
me talking so long that I almost forget what I 
wanted you for. (Shivering.) And we shall 
both of us have caught our deaths of cold. 

Daughter (crossing to the chimney-corner 
and filling her lap with hickory-nuts). — Let's 



A FARMER'S DA UGHTER. 151 

take down a dish of nuts and have them 
cracked this evening, with apples and a pitcher 
of egg-cider. 

(Sound of steps on the carpetless floor. A 
merry peal of laughter echoes through the hall, 
with the playfully triumphant words : ^* But 
what do you think of the garret, mother, as a 
family institution ? ") 

** Cleave the tough greensward with the spade. 
Wide let its hollow bed be made ; 
There gently lay the roots, and there 
Sift the dark mould with kindly care." 

Bryant. 

Over the broad swell of gently varied sur- 
face that crowns our stately hill-slopes, the 
indomitable three have walked with measuring 
eye and hand, planning groups and masses in 
fine proportion, and determining their relative 
positions. 

A load of young trees, whose brown, clinging 
roots pierce a black ball of earth, and whose 



152 JOURNAL OF 

light tops bend and sway in graceful mingle- 
ment, is followed to the brow of the ascent, 
where, from point to point, the distances are 
marked with truth and accuracy. 

Now the first spade is struck, the mound of 
earth thrown up, and a slender, swaying elm 
brought into position, denuded of its budding 
tips and branchlets by a wise severity. The 
upturned sods are replaced with care, the soil 
stamped down into all the crevices of root and 
bark, great stones laid up for firmer support ; 
and another set in turn. 

The broad swale beyond is planted with 
tamaracks, willows and elms ; oak and chest- 
nut, black and yellow birches, trees wild and 
picturesque mark the rocky knoll ; the rise is 
characterized by a softer growth of ashes and 
sugar-maples, descending southward to the 
brook side by soft maple and water-beech. On 
the northern exposure a long, irregular line of 
hemlock and spruce, with a few deciduous 
trees to the south and west, forms an effective 
wind-break, and a graceful group of the more 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 153 

unusual and striking kinds, as the stately tulip- 
tree, breaks the long eastern slope. 

Then, too, the clumps and borders of spon- 
taneous growth are simply and effectively 
massed, not forgetting the low, broad wall that 
is to be, the well-laid wall of native uncut 
stone, hedged about with blackberry and 
golden-rod, and richly festooned in autumn 
by 

** The frost-grape with its dusky blue, — 
Clematis vine, whose misty wreath 
Veils bitter-sweet beneath !" 

There is nothing we can do, my farmer 
friends, which lends so much character and 
dignity to a place as the judicious planting of 
trees. Let us soften down the harsh, forbid- 
ding angles of our New England homesteads, 
harboring a delicious warm.th, a grateful cool- 
ness. Let us plant out our dusty, staring 
highways, not in straight lines, but in naturally 
broken and varied groups. Let us screen our 
barns and plowed fields with clumps and fine 
single trees, leaving broad, irregular masses of 



IS4 JOURNAL OF 

shade in meadow and pasture. So shall man 
repair with skilful touches the ravages of 
man. 

Lovelier by far and far more fitting than the 
foreign, stilted specimens of nurserymen, are 
the simple, noble forms of our own forest trees, 
whose gradually enriching color and outline 
mingle with the wooded slopes of the sur- 
rounding country. And our own half-wild 
barriers, lichened walls and cedar posts, — what 
beside them are formal trimmed hedges of 
hemlock and arbor-vitae ? 

Who has not walked some winding wood- 
path or cart-track, or grass-grown highway of 
dog or fox, with a thought of the hidden sug- 
gestions in every slight inequality? So in the 
laying out of grounds, the marking of roads 
and boundary fences, we should have no arbi- 
trary lines, no meaningless curves ; but for 
every abrupt turn, every gentler gradual sweep, 
a corresponding rock or tree or soft irregularity 
of surface. If we follow the " lay of the land," 
keeping alike its sharp descents and exquisite 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 155 

gradations, and studying the living forms of 
wood and water with untiring love, we can 
easily dispense with technicalities and artificial 
contrasts, knowing well that we cannot go very 
far wrong. 

*' Stuff ! " exclaims the hard-headed old 
farmer, very bluntly and decidedly; .** senti- 
mentality,*' says the fond parent, with an in- 
dulgent smile; but is it not possible that 
they neither of them know just what they are 
talking about? 

It is never hard to find the man who can be 
hired to kill, and your hog or fat cow may 
readily be dispatched at home in a more or 
less workman-like manner ; but it strikes me 
that the muttered talk of your men, inter- 
spersed though it be with rude jests and noisy 
laughter, has in it something of superstitious 
horror, of ignorant fear. What was it I heard 
about whether the greater wrong were done 
in killing a horse or a cow ? Who was it that 



156 JOURNAL OF 

would not be bribed or threatened into drown- 
ing a sick kitten, — ** he had done it once and 
never wanted to again *' ? 

Yes, your boy will drown or torture the kit- 
ten and take a savage pleasure in it ; he will 
wring the chickens* necks if your little kitchen- 
maid will not ; and the men are not apt to 
trouble themselves much about the annual 
butchering, so far as you can see ! They are 
used to it, indeed ; and are not moved by the 
horror of it as are certain tender-hearted 
women, who yet will sacrifice nothing to their 
feelings, unless it be another*s peace of mind. 

For yourself you have no scruples ; these 
pigs and chickens are good for nothing else ; 
you have cared for them all their lives to no 
other end ; and doubtless you are right. But 
are you not under some obligation to your 
fellow-creatures, whose lives are given in your 
service ? 

When the old '^ pet pony *' broke his log, it 
was an act of mercy rather than of necessity 
to put an end to his sufferings. I honored 



A FA RMER' S DA UGHTER. 1 5 7 

the rough men who could not bear to shoot 
that faithful servant, with his speaking eyes 
turned toward them, and I honored still more 
the one who felt it hard, but had the courage 
for it. And unless I am much mistaken, more 
than one of you were moved to tears. 



This is the wheat, — 
The wheat well-grown, man's lawful spoil, 
The new-plucked fruit of patient toil ; 
Pledge me the farmer's sinewy hand, — 
His goodly acres waiting stand ; 
Pledge me the hands his force can wield 
To plow, to sow, to reap the field ! 
Bruise the bright heads and break them sore, 
Scatter the chaff from door to door, 
Show me the kernel sound and sweet, — 
The nation's bread, the winnowed wheat 

This is the flail, — 
The noisy flail, whose loud uproar 
Wears on the oaken threshing-floor ; 
A measured beat, a ringing round, 
A hardened resonance of sound ! 
The long, low scaffolds wax and wane, 
.Down drop the sheaves of garnered grain, 
And empty, careless, laughter-wild, 
The yellow straw is loosely piled. 



158 JOURNAL OF 

Those level crashings tell the tale, — 
Swing round the flail, the mighty flail ! 

These are the men, — 
The men who cleave, with sturdy stroke, 
A fallen giant's heart of oak, 
Now build for life, and life's demands. 
And fill with bread the waiting lands. 
Clash rhyme with rhyme, the thresher's song. 
Deal blows on blows, strike loud and long ; 
The wrench of hunger drives at length 
The iron of unyielding strength ; 
Wield the bent blade, — again, again. 
And serve the puny race of meu \ 



NOVEMBER. 

A SOUND of rolling barrels, like distant 
thunder, a rat-tat-tat of hammer and 
nails, a clatter of wooden shovels and rumble 
of voices echo along the floor, till we half be- 
lieve that wicked gnomes are burrowing un- 
derground. 

Let us take the kitchen candle-sticks of well- 
scoured brass, and warily descend the cellaro 
stairs, creeping over great white piles of 
empty sacks, and stumbling through a long 
and narrow passage by the light flickering 
flame of our taper, a mere will-o'-the-wisp in 
the face of unexplored darkness. 

A hollow vault of blackness, floored with 
straw and walled with stone, opens up before 

1 59 



i6o JOURNAL OF 

us. From an oaken beam depends a huge lan- 
tern, such as swung before some country tav- 
ern a half century or more ago. The floor is 
heaped high with whity-brown tubers ; rows of 
barrels, with yawning mouths, stand ready to 
receive them, and three men, one of whom di- 
rects the work, stalk about like gigantic shad- 
ows. For the dusty, cob-webbed corners of 
the room are dimly visible, faces and figures 
are much of the time in deep shadow, and 
whatever comes within the radiating core of 
light is thrown out in bold and startling relief. 
Were it not for the eminently respectable and 
amusingly ordinary avocation in which they 
are steadily engaged, the familiar features 
somewhat strengthened and the familiar tones 
subdued by the unusual place and hour, we 
might even now keep up the grim pleasantry 
of a fancy half charming and half grotesque. 

But never gnomes or hobgoblins came up 
from the underworld with such a clatter of big 
boots on the wooden stairs, while Mary fetched 
from the '' yellow cupboard *' at the stair- 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. i6i 

foot and set out on the kitchen table such 
cider and fragrant gingerbread and toothsome 
apple-pie ! 

A DARK, wet, windy morning, a regular 
north-easter, in fact ; yet not freezing, thank 
fortune, and lest it should clear off colder, those 
potatoes must be shipped to-day ! At eight 
o^clock three lumbering farm wagons and two 
yoke of oxen are standing under my window, 
while a couple of men roll barrel after barrel 
along the muddy track from the cellar door, 
grasp them firmly, if somewhat awkwardly, in 
their hands, raise them to the wagon-box, 
steady them with an arm, swing themselves off 
the box and leave them on end in the ap- 
proved position. 

Rather an animated scene that I look out 
upon with such suddenly-awakened interest : 
what with the curly square heads with drip- 
pmg hats pulled over the ears, that vanish 
from sight through the cellar door, and pop 



1 62 JOURNAL OF 

out again as unexpectedly ; the good-humored, 
energetic faces, with a fresh color in the tanned 
and bearded cheek; the rough, shapeless 
overcoats and checked shirt-sleeves; and be- 
hind them all a transparent swaying curtain 
of mist and rain. Perhaps one or another 
of them has occasion to cross the road to the 
barns and out-buildings, and whether he dashes 
into the pelting storm with head up and colors 
flying, or plods doggedly through the mud 
with head and shoulders thrown well forward, 
or swings along at an even, indifferent pace, 
the movement is a characteristic one, and well 
worthy an amused attention. 

In the course of an hour or thereabouts the 
ox-teams are started, with two boys perched 
on barrels, and one of them vainly wrestling 
with an inverted umbrella, while the horses 
are led out and harnessed by a practised hand. 

Ten minutes later and this last one has but- 
toned up his overcoat, jerked down his hat, 
taken his seat and the lines at the same time, 
and the yellow glint of the moving barrels has 
disappeared in the gray distance. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 163 

The daylight sky is white and calm, 
The moon's wan ghost looks strangely near ; 

The brittle air rings sharp as glass, 
As musically sharp and clear. 

The dry, cold air is touched with blight, 
No flowers the stubborn fields beguile. 

But in the sere and leafless woods 
The lone witch-hazel's spectral smile. 

These chill and colorless November days, 
when earth stands all aghast at the secret rav- 
ages of her insidious foe, stare us out of coun- 
tenance with a weird and pale fascination. 

The dead brown grass, the short rough stub- 
ble inspire the farmer with a vague distrust of 
the harvest ; even the familiar clamor of the 
barn-yard is thinned and sharpened and, as it 
were, spiritualized. The landscape has not 
that dull, sodden look of late November, when 
the earth seems heavily asleep and gloomily 
awaiting its coverlet of snow ; but an inef- 
fable peace, a divine purity suffuse the cold 
blue distance and the death-like pallor of the 



164 JOURNAL OF 

sky; There is something in late autumn 
which strangely and touchingly reminds one 
of early spring, and these days are the coun- 
terpart of days tender and passionless toward 
the end of March, without their exquisite feel- 
ing: of latent warmth. 



*t> 



No Indian summer's ghost betrays 
The feverish weakness of decline ; 

Looks of unearthly beauty raise 

The brow where death has set his sign. 

*Tis thus with aged, sightless eyes, — 

A disembodied soul is there ; 
And speechless, trembling lips devise 

The hallowed movement of a prayer. 

A GREAT deal has been said of late about 
the farmer's narrowness of life and restricted 
intercourse with others. Independence of life 
and thought is a grand thing, we hold, and so 
is that original force of character which is only 
to be nursed in solitude. Better a man of 
stubborn intellect and rugged virtues than 
breadth with shallowness and w^eakness with 
liberality. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 165 

There is always a golden mean, however, 
and a wider and freer communication with the 
outside world is much to be desired for the 
thinking farmer. There must be more or less 
intercourse between those who have and those 
who want, and the demand for bread might 
well be urgent enough to direct an immediate 
supply. But the farmer must meet the con- 
sumer more than half way, and make a market 
wherever he can ; selling on commission in 
the cities, or '^ trading it out '' in calico and 
sugar at the village store. 

This trade and barter in the necessaries of 
life seems more in character than buying and 
selling for a profit, which last has quite too 
much the air of speculation. It may be said 
that the educated farmer stakes his knowledge 
and influence against the other's grain or 
vegetables ; but this is dangerous ground, and 
not to be rashly ventured upon. The legiti- 
mate uses and methods of farming are surely 
wide and various enough ; for what farmer is 
able, at a moment's notice, to call in specialists 



iC6 JOURNAL OF 

in every department ? Some say he should be 
carpenter, machinist and farmer in one. 

Skipping again from theory to practice in the 
light and inconsequent manner which is per- 
haps the privilege of a farmer's daughter, I 
may speak of the various small errands of bus- 
iness and friendliness which fill up the odd 
minutes at this season of the year. A cow is 
bought ; a few tons of hay are sold ; a jar of 
wonderfully nice butter, a barrel of some par- 
ticular kind of apples, a pair of pigeons or a 
new seedling potato, go from hand to hand. 
Auctions, too, are largely attended by the auc- 
tion-buying and bargain-hunting class, and ex- 
cepting only the empty-pockets who go and 
bid for the fun of the thing, there is not one 
in ten who does not return encumbered with 
cheap and useless purchases, — second-hand 
farm and household utensils, all the way down 
to the latest household joke, an antique warm- 
ing-pan. 

'' 'Lection day" has brought the farmers to- 
gether for a mild exhilaration of political gos- 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 167 

sip, SO delicately spiced that one wonders at 
the current proverb, ^' hot as 'lection day." 
For the slight infusion of sociability is the 
thing, after all, in this raw November weather, 
and its very slightness is my only excuse for 
the rambling pages I have written. 

The unthrifty farmer is an anomaly of 
nature ; and whether he leaves his tools and 
tool-houses in smooth running order on the 
approach of winter or lets them fall to rust and 
ruin from exposure to cold and wet, we 
can easily judge of these dangerous tendencies 
of his. The plowshare and the grinning har- 
row teeth should not lie rusting on the ground ; 
the mower and reaper should stand with all 
their array of shining knives beside such ruder 
implements as rake and scythe, as shovel or 
spade. 

Whoever has an eye to the picturesque 
must look askance at the glittering monoto- 
nous machines that drive out the primitive 



1 68 JOURNAL OF 

grace of earlier years ; and the farmer*s daugh- 
ter in whom a large infusion of native good 
sense struggles against contradictions, listens 
gladly to the most unpractical enthusiast who 
boldly rides her own pet hobby. 

'* If this mechanical contriving is carried a lit- 
tle further/* she says, *^ we shall all be run by 
machinery. I don't believe this world was in- 
tended to go like clock-work, to be wound up 
and to run down.** And the theorist informs 
her that " the machine unmakes the man/* and 
that labor will, in the end, be able to compete 
with inventive ingenuity. 

How little we have seen of our cows and 
calves for six months or thereabouts of sum- 
mer pasturage, unless we strolled down the 
cottage way at night-fall, and waited for them 
at the pasture bars ! Now it seems that they 
have done nibbling at the juiceless November 
grass, and pull off with a relish the crisp sweet 
hay, greedily taking their pails of slops stirred 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 169 

up with meal. Their fall pickings, too, have 
been rich and varied, browsing among the 
corn-stalks, devouring the yellow pumpkins 
and fallen apples, and ranging with evident 
enjoyment the stripped and harvested fields. 

The same may be said of the poultry, Avhose 
latest broods are a care no longer, and who 
have feasted royally on the grain-stubble, weed- 
seeds, and bags of '* screenings,'' together with 
delicious morsels of late grasshoppers and frost- 
bitten fruit. Often, at this season, we taste the 
nicest of plump chickens, and find the whitest 
and sweetest of new-laid eggs in the clean 
straw. During the last fortnight, however, the 
older birds have been moulting, and warm and 
highly-seasoned food must be furnished under 
cover to the naked and forlorn-looking creat- 
ures with draggled wings and tail. It is a 
trying time for them ; but most of us are 
heartless enough to laugh at their shabby and 
mortified appearance. 

The turkeys, which are really half game- 
birds, troop through the fallen leaves, and gain 



lyo JOURNAL OF 

a richer flavor from chestnuts and acorns, than 
from bushels on bushels of Thanksgiving corn. 
When we have eaten all we can, and sent some 
to market, there will yet be a fine strutting 
gobbler, with beautiful bronze-green plumage, 
and six or eight hens, the pick of the flock, to 
start with in the spring. 

A hen-house must be warm and well venti- 
lated ; it should be large and light ; but with a 
rich, varied and abundant diet good results 
may be obtained under somewhat unfavorable 
conditions. Doubtless the same holds good of 
cows and horses ; for excellent work is done in 
every department without all the modern im- 
provements, and imperfect stabling is not half 
so serious a matter as dry and unsufficient 
food. 

I began by saying that the grazing flocks 
and herds attracted but little attention from 
the household coterie ; but winter walks on 
cold and blustering days may extend no further 
than the barns, and when the soft bright air 
tempts us along the brookside and through the 



A .FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 1 71 

snowy woods, we take them often on our 
return. Seating ourselves carelessly on a pile 
of boards, or leaning over the farm-gate, we 
feel that '' sudden warmth whose languor is 
almost oppressive." Sounds of homely fer- 
vency strike upon the ear, — 

*' The lazy cock's belated crow, 
And cattle-tramp in crispy snow." 

The cows, who are basking quietly in the 
sun and munching an occasional lock of hay, 
bestir themselves a little and come up to the 
bars for us to stroke their rough coats. Even 
Daisy's delicate fawn-color and Buttercup's dap- 
pled skin are less sleek than soft grass to lie 
upon and dainty summer fare have made them. 
The black-faced little bull indulges in some 
rather rough play, and Daisy's calf frolics in- 
nocently about him. 

We let them take salt from our hands, and 
amuse ourselves with scattering grain to the 
fowls. Then the nests are ransacked for €ggs; 
and laughing, stamping, clapping our hands. 



172 JOURNAL OF 

we reenter the house by the back door, with a 
farmer-like feehng of cheerful familiarity with 
every-day matters. 

Sullen and black is the windless November 
sky, and the frozen clods of earth creak dis- 
mally under foot. There is something miserly 
in the very aspect of Nature, as if she had pro- 
vided but scantily for her own wants, and 
grudged the smallest kindness. 

A few half-wild apples, with rosy, withered 
cheeks, rattle down through the bare branches ; 
seeds and buds of fragrant birch or orchard 
tree eke out the scanty store of tasteless and 
shrunken berries. We can only guess at 
precious hoards of nuts and acorns put thriftily 
away in leaf-lined nests. 

Nevertheless the barns are bursting with 
grass and grain, — 

** The cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
And garrets creak beneath their load." 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 173 

Under red roofs and roofs of thatch there is 
food in frugal plenty ; for man has excelled in 
forethought, in the wisdom and variety of his 
entertainment. 

Now, too, the house-wife's skilful prepara- 
tion is fairly begun. Rich and savory meats 
are laid in readiness ; the turkey, plump and 
fair, is overpowered with stuffing and smoth- 
ered in gravy, and the youngest of the chickens 
are transformed into that delectable com- 
pound, — chicken pie. Puddings and jellies 
may serve to follow these ; whitest and deli- 
catest of pastry, reddest and crispest of 
wintry apples. 

I am not writing a bill of fare, however ; the 
Thanksgiving dinner is, above all, a farmer's 
festival, and home-grown products, above all, 
should load his hospitable board. The boys 
bring apples and pumpkins, corn-meal and 
maple-sweets and cider ; while 

" Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, 
Shall peel the fruit by cottage hearth," 



174 JOURNAL OF 

and mingle foreign delicacies of raisins and 
sugar and chocolate. , 

When all the farmer*s family work heartily- 
together, the fun and sociability are almost as 
great as on the occasion of the dinner itself ; 
and pleasure comes unbidden in planning for 
the feast. 

If the material blessings of the day are the 
farmer's peculiar gift, if he turns with pardon- 
able pride to the fruits of his labor on tables 
other than his own, how much more ardently 
welcoming is his joy at the wanderers' return. 
There are many old New England homesteads 
which are still the cynosure of loving eyes, and 
the household greetings, the ancient custom- 
ary gatherings, are among the oldest privi- 
leges of land and home. 

Thanksgiving Day ! What fervent thoughts 
and sweet renewals of common gratitude blos- 
som out of the old time-sanctioned cere- 
monial ! Men, women and children all over the 



\ 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 175 

land are giving thanks to the farmer as the 
visible means of God's invisible grace. And is 
not he too thankful for the blessed frequency of 
sun and rain, for the direct influence of days and 
seasons, for the fruitful seed and potent soil ? 

This is a trying time for him, nevertheless, — 
a time of change and transition. The old 
notions are getting more and more unsettled, 
and new ones are pushing to the front. There 
is scarcely a typical farmer any longer, so wide 
are the differences between the scheming spec- 
ulator, the country gentleman, and the plain 
hard-working man. I am thankful enough, for 
my own part, that farming is not money-mak- 
ing, and that some of us, in this rapid and 
reckless age, must time ourselves to nature. 
We would make all trade a species of gamb- 
ling, but we cannot trifle for long with the 
original calling of our race. Nobody wants or 
can have more than a living, and nobody need 
expect to live otherwise than plainly on a farm. 
The higher wants must be fed from the higher 
life of man. Substantial labor brings substan- 



176 JOURNAL OF 

tial gains, but not the freedom of wide expendi- 
ture. 

Implements of labor and methods of work 
have been, of late years, so completely trans- 
formed and so ingeniously fostered as sadly to 
bewilder our brains and confuse our action. 
Everything has been heard of, from silos to 
deep-can setting, and much experimental 
knowledge has its dangerous tendencies. We 
lay no claim as yet to consistency of theory or 
practice. 

This journal has been written in good faith, 
and its slightnesses and irregularities are easily 
explained by a literal reading. I began by 
scouting those problematic questions of *' the 
farmer's life and labor,'' and am laughing at 
my own presumption in undertaking them at 
last. I have never worn the rose-colored spec- 
tacles of city visitors, to whom a fanciful pret- 
tiness becomes a sort of craze ; I have not 
looked through the dull, smoked glasses of 
weary Gradgrinds, who will not discover the 
most simple and obvious beauties. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 177 

And I still insist that the farmer has a great 
deal to be thankful for. '' The possession 
and use of land '* is a grand thing in itself ; 
Emerson is in the right of it, the farmer 
** stands well on the world/' He may doubt 
and demean himself, but he is what he is. 
Others may sadly underrate him, but his posi- 
tion is always the same. 

Winter, the season of rest, is frankly ac- 
cepted by him, and the leisure of earth is the 
farmer's leisure. 

"And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil." — Emerson. 

How many of us can say that ? How many 
of us can identify ourselves in like manner 
with the rocks and trees of our native place ? 
Crabbed and queer we may well submit to be 
called, if we but savor a little of the close yet 
kindly earth. 

The rustic neighborhoods of western Massa- 
chusetts are quaint and character-full; not so 



178 JOURNAL OF 

much in villages, as in lonely hamlets and on 
scattered hill-farms. It may be that the shal- 
low and frigid soil sometimes stints a man 
in the matter of ripe knowledge and charitable 
wisdom ; but it is seldom that the frost strikes 
deep enough to warp his harsher judgments. 

On a fine and dry October day, the second 
of their pilgrimage, five congenial people were 
driving about the country in a wonderfully 
easy and gay and independent fashion. Near 
the summit of a hill, picturesquely steep, com- 
manding a rich prospect with a broad interval 
of farming land, they noticed the smooth slop- 
ing meadows dotted over with dark conical 
hay-stacks. Some were fresh and firm, and 
solidly built, some falling quite apart, and 
others in the last stages of blackness and de- 
cay. As they drove slowly on, commenting 
curiously on. these and other signs of ruinous 
neglect and loss, the deserted homestead came 
into view. It had once been large and in good 
condition, now it looked more than neglected 
or disused ; there was something wild and posi- 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER, 179 

lively ghastly about it. The doors and win- 
dows were falling in, planks were torn up and 
timbers all awry. Why throw away such valua- 
ble property? for it must have been well worth 
looking to. Then, too, the newly-made stacks, 
indicating that work had not been wholly dis- 
continued, puzzled and astonished us all not a 
little. 

" This place has a story ! ** was the general 
exclamation ; and spying out two or three 
men picking apples in a fine old orchard, the 
boldest and most insinuating of us all was sent 
to investigate. Meanwhile we guessed, but 
not with the proverbial Yankee shrewdness, for 
the wildest and most improbable stories were 
every one founded on a disappointment in 
love ! 

Romantic weakness is not, however, the pe- 
culiar folly of mankind ; and the true explana- 
tion was much more interesting, and hardly less 
remarkable. The owner had been a man of 
hard and miserly disposition, who had kept his 
wife and daughters in grinding poverty while 



i8o JOURNAL OF 

he slowly amassed his hard-won wealth. His 
meanness and selfish obstinacy were such that 
he sometimes overreached himself. He was 
now well off and living in the nearest town ; 
his wife was dead, if I remember rightly, his 
daughters safely married ; but the lonely and 
crotchety old man carried his weakness to the 
point of monomania. He could not sell his 
hay for the price he demanded, so year after 
year it was stacked in the field ; wandering 
cattle ate it, men carried it off by the cart-load, 
rain soaked and spoiled it, and tons upon tons 
had rotted down to the ground. Not only the 
fine rich meadow grass, but many "' days* 
works *' in season made a heavy annual loss. 

The stingy old farmer was the laughing- 
stock of all his fellows, and was cheated right 
and left by those who knew his failing. So his 
very sharpness and closeness ran to weeds and 
waste, and in lacking one thing he lacked all. 

A single instance will serve to illustrate the 
eccentricity of a few, but the homely simplicity 
and shrewdness, the local color and tone. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. i8i 

bordering at worst on harmless and pleasant 
little oddities, are among the salient features of 
farm life in New England. 

The grape-filled vine is faintly green, 
The dusky corn-ears nod unseen ; 
To wondering eyes past scenes appear, 
The splendid pageant of the year. 

Subdued rich music mixes in 
The rustling tread and gathering din ; 
Exultant swell the trumpets all, 
Drums beat the long processional. 

The slow sun and the stiffening mould 
Subdue late warmth with crowding cold ; 
The march of seasons buries deep 
The plowshare's curve, the sickle's sweep. 

O tardy gains, with cheerful mirth 
Brought from the fruitful lap of earth ; 
O plumy stalks of silken maize, 
And tanned buckwheat in ruddy haze ! 

Brown, strong and glad the laborer stands. 
With gifts and tokens in his hands ; 
His roving eyes strike and rebound, 
He feels his foot upon the ground. 



lS2 JOURNAL OF 

His massive oxen push and crowd, 

He pricks their sides, and laughs aloud ; 

His horses' iron hoof-beat rings, — 

He curbs the rein, and shouts and sings ! 

A maiden follows in his train, 
Her lap is filled with swarthy grain ; 
Binding her shapely head and small, 
A black and braided coronal. 

She bends upon him in his place 
The dusky splendors of her face ; 
With lovely archness leans anear 
To ransom back the blood-red ear. 

The fostering earth, with pure intent. 
Yields up its living nourishment ; 
Sweet-breathed and calm, in straggling line^ 
Follow the milky-uddered kine. 

The soft rejoicing lovers hear 
Melodious sinks upon the ear ; 
Like ripened leaves detached at whiles, 
Innumerous, dim, in whispering aisles. 

But noise of work is harshly blent. 
As some rude jangling instrument 
By unskilled hands on different keys 
Strikes out neglected harmonies. 

And garments mean, of sullen dye, 
Blot the fair earth and fairer sky ; 
Dark faces glower, heavy, grim, 
With body bent, and withered limb. 



A FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 183 

Old and more old, poor and more poor, 
They drag their tired feet past my door. 
In squalid rags, a hateful round 
Of convict-labor, dismal sound ! 

Accursed time, bring round once more 
The march of triumph played before, 
The tender, joyful, pride-full strain 
From travail wrung, and trampling pain ! 

Again the trumpet's clarion cry, 
The haughty step, the flashing eye, 
The fair bold girls, the boys and men, 
In thick array bring back again ! 

Ah, happy they whose loaded wain 
Bears, fruitful sheaves of heavy grain, 
But happier we who see and hear 
The thankful beauty of the year ! 



^OTE,' — These papers were first published, in part, in the 
Christian U^iion^ under the title of " A Summer Journal." 



184 



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